Stranglehold
by The Impala
Summary: NCIS's investigation into the death of a marine stalls, leaving the team frustrated and with more questions than answers. Like what is the FBI's involvement? And why is Tony convinced that there is a strange Chevy following their every move?
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** We don't own pretty boys. Or super awesome agents. We don't even own the title. We were just bored, okays?

Takes place in season 3 of both shows, even though technically season 3 of Supernatural takes place in season 5 of NCIS. . . but we won't go there if you don't. No specific episode spoilers, but there are obviously spoilers up to and including season 3 of both shows.

Rated T: Light swearing, threats of bodily harm, comic injury, death . . . nothing major.

* * *

Laney Dawson smiled widely as she pulled out a couple of cold bottles of beer and nudged them across the counter at the two servicemen in front of her. The men smiled back and clinked the bottles together.

"Here's to the grand opening," said the first one, a tall blonde.

"We've already had four drinks and you're just toasting the opening now?" his friend asked, amused. He accepted the beer without complaint, though.

"Well, we had to wait for Laney to come round. Busy night, eh?" He winked at her as he threw back the bottle. His friend did the same, in a slightly less dramatic fashion.

"Opening night, Alex, it's to be expected," Laney replied.

"This place has been a long time coming," Alex said, clunking the bottle down on the counter with a satisfied sigh. "Ain't it, Benny?" he clapped his friend on the shoulder. Benny merely smiled.

"Well I'm glad you boys like it," Laney said, glancing around at the crowded room. The bar was packed. There were a lot of uniforms, men and women, and the occasional civilian. "I hope business keeps up like this," she added.

Alex grinned and half-leaned over the counter, "When there's such a hot bartender I don't see why they wouldn't keep coming."

Laney blushed a little despite herself. Beside Alex, Benny glowered and took another drink from his beer.

"Isn't your wife waiting for you at home?" he asked Alex pointedly.

"So's yours," Alex drawled, a little drunkenly. "I'm just having some fun, Ben. Besides, Laney and I go way back, don't we?"

Laney looked away. She had rather forgotten that Alex was married, and that their high school fling was long in the past. She smiled weakly at him, searching for a reply when another patron interrupted flagging her over from the end of the bar. "Duty calls," she commented lightly.

"Well, pop on over if you get another break," Alex told her as she turned to leave.

Benny let his empty bottle drop the the table with a light thud. "Come on," he said jerking his head towards the exit, "Let's take off."

"What?" Alex replied pulling his gaze away from Laney's retreating figure to look at his friend. "It's still early, we could have another round or two."

"Come on, Alex. We've barely been home a week and you want to spend all night at a bar? I don't know why I even let you convince me to come," he groused, dropping some money on the counter. "I'm out of here, you coming or not?"

"Nah," Alex replied after another sip on his nearly emptied beer, "I'll catch up with you later."

"Whatever," Benny muttered under his breath as he turned and made his way through the crowd to the door. Alex only grunted in response.

Alone, Alex finished off his drink. He glanced down the bar, searching out Laney, but she was busy with another customer, so he flagged the other bartender down for a refill. It was still relatively early and although a few of the drinkers seemed to have called it quits for the night the crowd had not thinned much. Alex dragged out his beer, but half an hour later it was clear that Laney was not going to be stopping by to chat again any time soon. Adding his own money to Benny's, he cleared off their tab and headed for the door himself.

Stumbling slightly Alex left the noises of the bar behind and made his way into the deserted parking lot. It was a cloudy night and pretty dark by now. Alex's car was parked in the back lot, away from the street and its lights. There were fewer cars here. He fumbled with his keys as he reached his vehicle, dropping them on to the grimy pavement once and having to bend over to pick them up again. He jerked the door open with a grunt and climbed in, swaying slightly.

While fiddling with the keys he hummed a little off-kilter country tune, the last song he'd heard before he left the bar. Or maybe it had been a few songs back, he could not quite remember. He turned the key in the ignition and the engine made a lame puttering sound before cutting out.

"Aw, come on," Alex grumbled. He turned the keys again, and the engine made the same struggling noising before petering off in a shaking wheeze. "You've got to be kidding me," he moaned hitting the dash. Just what he needed, for his car to crap out on him now.

Looking up he caught sight of something in the rear view mirror that made his eyes go wide. Then they narrowed in a frown of confusion. "What the hell—" he cut off with a gasp. His face reddened and contorted as he began choking. His arm made it just high enough to grasp the steering wheel and claw at his neck as he struggled to breath. He coughed and spluttered, making a desperate wheezing noise that was almost like the sound his car had made only a few moments earlier. His eyes bulged as his vision started to grey around the edges.

After a few minutes Alex Fisher's body slumped over motionless in the driver's seat.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N:** Yes we are aware that no characters from NCIS or Supernatural appeared in this chapter. . . uh, bear with us they are on their way. . . we swear.


	2. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own pretty boys, or super awesome agents, or title, or much of anything. . .

* * *

The NCIS bullpen was filled with the sound of rustling papers and typing. The typing was not so unusual. The rustling papers however, were all coming from one particular agent's desk, and they were starting to attract the attention of his coworkers. Thunk. A stack of files was unceremoniously lifted off the desk and plunked back down again. Clink. The pens rolled around in their case as it was shoved to one side. Woosh. Several loose papers fluttered onto the floor.

"Tony," Mossad Officer Ziva David sat up in her chair with a bemused expression. "What are you doing?"

"I can't find it!" Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo ground out in frustration. He cast an accusing glance over at her. "Did you touch my stuff, Ziva?"

Ziva raised an eyebrow as she looked over the small collection of empty coffee mugs and sandwich wrappings and even a half-eaten donut that littered Tony's desk. "I wouldn't dream of it. Really. Unless it was a terrible nightmare."

Tony was already back to rummaging and shuffling through his mess. "McGee!" he shouted.

"What?" Special Agent Timothy McGee asked exasperatedly, finally looking up from his computer to see what Tony was doing. He did not look impressed, nor did he look surprised.

"You touch my stuff?" Tony demanded.

"No," McGee replied easily, going back to his typing.

"It was a letter-size manila envelope, Probie," Tony went on, waltzing over slowly to stand by McGee's desk as if McGee hadn't answered him. "It was right here on top of my desk when I left last night, and when I got here this morning it was gone!"

"I didn't touch your stuff, Tony," McGee said patiently. Or very impatiently, depending on one's perspective.

"Why didn't you just take it home if it was so important?" Ziva asked. She leaned forward on her desk with a sly smile. "What's in it, Tony, the latest porn?"

Tony cast her a withering look. "No, Zee-vah," he said, dragging her name out mockingly. "Of course it's not porn. I am a professional." He whipped around to face McGee again. "Probie! Did you take my porn?"

McGee looked up at Tony indignantly as if he was about to protest, but then he shut his mouth again as if he had seen something, or rather someone, behind him.

Tony's eyes widened, but he didn't have time to flinch out of the way as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs smacked him across the back of the head.

"It's not really porn, Boss," he told Gibbs meekly.

Gibbs only looked at him. "Grab your gear," he called briskly. He brushed past Tony with a cup of coffee in one hand and started gathering up his bag and his gun from his desk. The other agents in the room quickly dropped what they were doing and did the same, except for Tony, who was still nursing the back of his head and looking down at his desk with a somewhat forlorn expression.

"Have you checked your drawer, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked impatiently, already donning his jacket.

Tony's mouth opened and shut wordlessly, and his head tilted to one side as if he was just having a startling revelation. He looked down and opened the first drawer on his desk, almost in awe. There was a letter-size manila envelope.

"Boss, how did you know—?" Tony looked up to see the other members of the team filing into the elevator and the door about to shut. He scrambled to grab his stuff and made a mad dash across the room.

The elevator door shut in his face.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Gibbs pulled the sedan to an abrupt halt next to the yellow crime scene tape that roped off a section of the parking lot. His team piled out of the car and with kits in hand, ducked under the tape. At the centre of the cordoned-off area was a beat-up dark blue station wagon, with the driver's side door ajar.

Barking instructions to his team, Gibbs made a bee-line to the vehicle, coming to a stop behind the older man already crouched by the door. "What've we got, Ducky?" Gibbs asked.

Dr. Donald Mallard looked up at the question. "Good morning, Jethro," he replied cheerfully, as though the two men were meeting over a cup of coffee rather than a corpse.

Gibbs grunted and peered at the body slumped in the front seat. "Strangulation?" he asked, noting the petechial hemorrhage in the man's eyes.

"Possible," Ducky commented, "But the lack of bruising suggests suffocation," he said, lowering the man's collar with a gloved finger to display the unmarked neck. "We'll know more when we get him back to autopsy."

"TOD?" Gibbs prodded.

"Liver temp suggests he expired at approximately eleven last evening," Ducky replied smoothly as he withdrew the probe from the man's abdomen.

"There don't appear to be any signs of a struggle." Ziva commented as she approached with the camera to snap several shots of the body. "Perhaps he was surprised?"

"Or he knew his attacker," Tony suggested from a few feet away.

The first officer on the scene, a young local cop, made his way over to the group halting any further speculation. "Sir," he said, addressing Gibbs, "The man who found the body is over there." He gestured to a tall man standing over at the edge of the tape with a second officer. "He said he came by to pick up his car, and noticed the man not moving, came to get a closer look and called us when he realized the guy was dead."

"DiNozzo," Gibbs called.

"On it, Boss," Tony replied heading off to speak to the witness without further instruction.

"You touch anything?" Gibbs questioned the cop.

"No sir. Saw he was a marine and called it in. This close to the base we know when to step back."

Gibbs just nodded and turned back to the body. The marine was young, probably around twenty-seven. He had closely cropped blonde hair and even sitting it was clear he was rather tall. A gold band around his left ring finger indicated he was married. Gibbs sighed. "You done here Ducky?"

"I do believe so," Ducky muttered, stepping back and holding out a wallet to Gibbs while motioning to his assistant, Jimmy Palmer.

Gibbs accepted the wallet with a gloved hand and flipped it open. The ID read 'Alexander Fisher.' The stripes on his uniform marked him as a staff sergeant. He checked the address listed on the license, and noted the man lived on base, before handing the wallet over to McGee who slipped it into an evidence bag.

Across the parking lot, DiNozzo pulled out his badge as he approached the dark-skinned man who had discovered the corpse. "Special Agent DiNozzo, NCIS. What can you tell me?"

"Not much really," the man replied as he deliberately focused his attention anywhere but on the body that Palmer and Ducky where now pulling out of the car. "I was here last night, having a few drinks with my brother, and we got a little carried away so I took a taxi home. I just came back this morning to pick up my car, but I walked past him and he was kinda slumped over in his seat."

The man shifted uneasily on his feet as he explained. "I figured he just passed out or something so I went to take a look, make sure he was okay. But when I got close, he was all pale and his eyes were wide open and all glassy." The man finished with a shudder. "My brother, he's Navy, he probably wouldn't think much of this, but I work in banking. Just seeing that guy's . . . body. . ." He trailed off looking at Tony who just gave him a sympathetic nod and jotted down his details before sending the man on his way.

"So Probie, find the case-breaking lead?" Tony questioned as he rejoined the team.

McGee barely spared the senior agent a glance as he continued his walk-through of the crime scene. He had bagged a few objects from around the car, but nothing seemed particularly out of place for a bar parking lot. Even the car bore little evidence that a man had died in it, especially as the corpse was now stowed in the autopsy van that was just pulling away heading back to the office.

A dark blue SUV pulled into the parking lot and a older man with slicked back salt and pepper hair headed directly for them. Gibbs and Tony moved to intercept him before he crossed the tape.

"Sorry sir, this is an active crime scene," Tony informed the man.

"But this is my bar!" the man protested gesturing to the building they stood behind.

"And this is my crime scene," Gibbs deadpanned.

"This can't be happening," the owner moaned. "We just opened last night. This is going to kill us."

"Were you here at the opening?" Tony queried pulling out his notebook.

"Yes, of course," the man said distractedly, looking past them at the other two agents who were currently readying the victim's car for transport back to the garage. "They said someone was . . . killed?" He asked, his tone almost begging them to tell him otherwise.

"Yes, I'm afraid a marine was found dead in his vehicle, I don't suppose you noticed him last night?"

"A marine? There were a couple dozen marines in the place last night, even more Navy. We're practically on the base here," the owner replied with a wave at his arm. "I can't believe this is happening," he continued. "You know this place used to be a bar years back, then bam a couple military folk go and die in this lot and the place goes under! Now its happening all over again. I can't lose this business, all my money is invested in this club."

"This marine lost a lot more than that," Gibbs said sharply, "He lost his life."

"Er, yes, well," the man faltered slightly. He mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Gibbs glared at him.

"Do you know anyone who might have seen him last night?"

"No idea," the man grumbled. "I could call in Laney and Michelle. They were on shift."

"You do that," said Gibbs. Satisfied with seeing the man start dialing he turned to Tony. "DiNozzo, you and Ziva talk to those two when they get here."

Tony nodded obediently and went off to round up Ziva, who was still taking some photos of the victim's car. Gibbs shouted across the lot for McGee to come with him.

"Wait," the owner called frantically, "How soon will all of this be over? When can I expect the yellow tape to be taken down? You're not going let the press get on this, are you?"

Gibbs scowled. "My only concern is finding out what happened to this marine."

The man deflated as Gibbs walked away with McGee in tow. McGee hurried along awkwardly and tossed what little evidence he had bagged into the trunk. He was sort of hoping Gibbs wouldn't comment on how little he'd managed to find.

As they climbed into the black sedan he looked over at Gibbs awkwardly. "Where are we heading, boss?"

"Staff Sergeant Fisher had a wife," Gibbs said grimly. "We're going to talk to her."

"Oh," McGee replied lamely. Gibbs started up the engine and McGee braced himself for his boss's insane driving as the sedan tore out of the parking lot.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N: **See, we promised they would show. . . well, uh, half of them anyway. Supernatural boys are coming. . . really.


	3. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: We own DVDs! But uh, not much else.

* * *

It didn't take them too long to get to the marine's house. It was one of many houses on the base which all followed more or less the same design. Like everything in the military, one might suspect they were standard issue.

McGee and Gibbs climbed out of the car, and although Gibbs had his regular stoic expression McGee looked pale already. There was nothing intimidating about the house itself, it was white and cheery, with a neatly trimmed lawn and a well tended garden of petunias. They reached the door and Gibbs knocked firmly while McGee fidgeted.

They heard a few soft thuds as someone made their way down the stairs. "I swear to god, Alex!" a slightly muffled woman's voice shouted. "If you're too drunk or hungover to open the damn door. . . after I've been waiting up all night on you. . . I swear I'll. . ."

She never elaborated on her threat, and a few seconds later the door swung open. McGee watched as the annoyed look on the woman's face quickly turned to shock, then flushed a little with embarrassment, and finally crumpled in concern. She seemed at a loss for words.

"Mrs. Fisher," Gibbs began, introducing himself and McGee as NCIS agents.

"Is this about Alex?" Mrs. Fisher asked weakly. "Did he get himself into some kind of trouble?" It seemed from the way the colour had drained from her face and the way her hands were trembling that she already had an idea why they were here.

Gibbs said it anyway. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Fisher. Your husband is dead."

Mrs. Fisher's mouth formed an 'oh' but no sound came out. Something in her face twitched, as if she was struggling to keep it in place. She went even paler than before and swayed slightly in the doorway. Then she pitched straight toward McGee in a dead faint.

McGee froze with his arms pinned uselessly to his sides, but fortunately for the poor woman Gibbs leaned forward and caught her.

"McGee, go get a damp towel," Gibbs ordered, carrying her into the house.

"Uh, y-yes, right away, Boss," McGee stammered, looking somewhat relieved to have been given something to do. He darted straight down the hallway before realizing that the bathroom was in another direction.

Mrs. Fisher came to a few minutes later, after they had set her on the couch and McGee had nearly tripped over himself looking for a towel. She spent a good ten minutes after that sobbing incoherently. Gibbs ordered McGee to fetch various objects like tea and tissues while he tried to soothe Mrs. Fisher and calm her down. She had been reduced to sniffling, her face red and puffy. Gibbs sat by her on the large green couch, while McGee perched uncomfortably on the edge of the smaller sofa across from them.

She was a young woman, thin and sickly looking – although this may have come from crying. Her skin was pasty and her blonde hair wispy and tangled. Sitting slumped on her couch, she looked especially tired.

"A-Alex just came b-back from Iraq last week," she sniveled. "I – I never expected. . . I thought he was supposed to be safe now. . ."

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Fisher," Gibbs said gently. "We are investigating your husband's death. I promise we will find out who did this to him."

Mrs. Fisher looked up tearfully, trying to compose herself and failing. "Who did – who did this? Why? Was he murdered?"

"That's what we believe," Gibbs said carefully.

"But who would want to hurt Alex?" she asked. "I thought – when you said you found him in the car – he passed out from alcohol poisoning and. . ."

"We haven't determined cause of death yet," Gibbs said. "Are you sure you don't know of anybody who might have had a grudge against him? Anyone he argued with?"

Mrs. Fisher sniffled again and shook her head. "No. No one."

"Has he been acting strangely since he got back?" Gibbs asked. "Anything odd or suspicious?"

"No," she wiped her eyes, "He started hitting the bars a lot after a couple of days, but that's nothing new."

Gibbs nodded grimly. "Did your husband have a drinking problem, Mrs. Fisher?"

Mrs. Fisher hesitated. "No. Well, I mean, never on duty. . . But, I mean, he always used to say the off time was party time, you know?"

"Was he usually like this?" McGee asked.

She looked over at him as if she had almost forgotten he was there. "I – no – no not always. Whenever he came back from a really long tour he'd want to spend a lot of time together, at least for a few days. But then, I dunno, after a few days or so, it's like he'd get distracted. . . Like he'd forget about me already. . ."

"Must have put a strain on your marriage," Gibbs prodded lightly.

"What? No. . . well, I don't know. . ." Her lower lip trembled, as if she was going to burst into tears again.

"Can you tell us where you were last night?" Gibbs asked, changing the subject.

"I was at home," Mrs. Fisher said vaguely, almost confused, as if she had no other reason to be anywhere else. "I was up all night waiting for Alex, but he never showed. . . I can't believe he's really. . ." Her voice cracked and she stared off vacantly. The rims of her eyes were red and puffy and she looked like she might faint again.

McGee did not think they would be getting much else out of her. Clearly Gibbs agreed, because he thanked Mrs. Fisher for her time and stood up from the couch. "We'll be in touch."

Mrs. Fisher nodded, but did not really look at them. She lead them to the door out of habit, and waved with a vacant, watery half-smile as they climbed into the car. Gibbs' driving was as erratic as ever, but he did not say a word to McGee on the way back to the office.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"So, you knew the victim?" Tony asked leaning against the counter. The young bartender nodded wordlessly as her eyes teared.

"Yes. Oh God. Alex. I can't believe it. . . he was just here last night," she said, gesturing to the bar, "He just came by 'cause we were opening and I invited him." She sniffed, "How could this happen?"

"We don't know yet." Tony replied smoothly, "But if there is anything you could tell us it would really help, anyone you noticed with Alex last night, maybe?"

"Well, he came in with a guy, they worked together I guess. They seemed like friends." Laney explained, "His name was Benny, I'm sorry I don't know his last name."

"That's fine. Did either of them seem upset at all? Were they fighting, anything like that?" Tony prompted.

"Not really, I think maybe Benny left first. . . he was kinda getting on Alex's case for talking with me. It's not like we were doing anything wrong though, we're just friends," Laney replied her tone slightly defensive.

"What about anyone else? Did you notice Alex get in any sort of confrontation with anyone?"

"No, I mean Alex is. . . well was. . . a pretty laid back guy you know? He wouldn't get into it with anyone, even when he was drinking."

"So you can't think of any reason anyone would hurt him?"

Laney shook her head, "No, no like I said Alex wasn't that kind of guy."

Tony nodded and cast a glance over at Ziva who had been interviewing the second bartender, a petite brunette, across the room. She seemed to be done, so Tony flipped his notepad shut and offered out a card to Laney. "Call me if you think of anything else," he told her before cutting across the club to meet up with his partner.

"Did you get anything useful?" Ziva asked as he approached.

Tony gave a little half-shrug. "Well, she knew him, said they have been friends since high school. And it looks like our vic. was here with a friend last night, another marine, Benny no last name. We should probably check him out later."

"Michelle," Ziva said with a nod in the brunette's direction, "was less than helpful. She thinks she might have served him drinks, but then again, perhaps not. Apparently there were several blonde marines at the bar last night, and she was incapable of recalling him."

Tony grunted, "'Course, had to be opening night, place'll probably never see that much business in one night ever again."

"Agent DiNozzo?" a voice interrupted from the doorway causing Tony and Ziva to turn and look. A junior agent stood in the entrance way. "We're ready to tow the car back to the garage," he called.

Tony gave the man a nod. "All right, let Abby know when you arrive," he replied as the man disappeared back out the door.

"So other than a marine named Benny, we've got nothing?" Tony sighed.

"It would appear so," Ziva replied, "Perhaps Gibbs and McGee—" She stopped abruptly and turned to the door just as a motor started up in the back lot. Startled she looked to Tony, "Gibbs and McGee took the sedan."

Tony stared at Ziva for a moment as the meaning of her words dawned on him. Simultaneously the two agents sprinted for the door.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: . . . Okay, so it may not seem like a cross-over, but it is. Really. We promise.


	4. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own pretty boys or awesome agents. We do own the season four DVD set of Supernatural as of today, though. Woohoo!

* * *

"My my my, how did you end up like this?"

Palmer looked up, although he didn't know why. By now he was quite accustomed to the idea that Dr. Mallard was probably not speaking to him – even though he was the only other living person in the room.

"You mean 'dead', doctor?" Palmer supplied helpfully.

Ducky looked over at his assistant, and Palmer couldn't decide if he seemed faintly annoyed or bored. Perhaps both. "Yes, Mr. Palmer," he said patiently, "That is what I meant."

The two of them were examining the body of the young marine they had just brought in, however, so far they had not found much. They had gone through all the basics, liver temp, cleaning the body, the y-incision, checking for lacerations, offensive or defensive wounds, abrasions, bruises, hemorrhaging, broken bones. . . Nothing. Staff Sergeant Fisher, it seemed, had very little to tell them. At least, that's what Ducky would say.

The cause of death, asphyxiation, had seemed fairly obvious from the start, but as to what had caused the victim to suffocate. . . well that was a mystery which was normally up to Gibbs and the team to solve. But since they had found out so very little from their autopsy, they were both feeling like their job was incomplete. Or perhaps that was just Palmer. He glanced up again and was a little relieved to see that Ducky at least looked as puzzled as he felt.

The marine obviously hadn't answered Ducky's question, and the silence in the autopsy room was becoming stifling.

"Maybe," Palmer began, although he didn't really have anything to add. And as if on cue to save him from looking like an idiot, Gibbs chose that moment to burst through the doors.

"What have you got Ducky," he demanded. "Tell me you have something."

That did not sound good. They didn't have anything, and Gibbs was looking a little stressed already.

Ducky looked up from the body, still frowning, which was unlike him. "It seems our young marine suffocated to death, as we suspected before."

"And?" Gibbs prompted impatiently.

"Well, it is the most peculiar thing Jethro," Ducky said, looking quite disconcerted himself. "There's no evidence as to what might have caused it. There are no bruises on his neck to indicate strangulation, no offensive or defensive wounds to indicate a struggle, no fibers around his face to indicate that he was smothered, and no outward signs of chemical influence. Although," he added with a raised hand, as if to deflect some of Gibbs' wrath, "I did send blood and urine samples up to Abby for further analysis, just in case."

"What are you telling me, Duck? Staff Sergeant Fisher just dropped dead?"

"Impossible as it is, it certainly seems that way," Ducky said, his mouth pressed into a grim line. "Something stopped him from breathing, but I haven't a clue what. Unless our poor boy reveals something new, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything else."

"Well that's just great," Gibbs said, his tone of voice implying that this was anything but. He stormed past Palmer and out of the room without another word.

"Oh, my dear lad," Ducky said with a click of his tongue. Again Palmer looked up, but Ducky was talking to the dead marine, as per usual. "Whatever did happen to you?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

McGee looked up from his desk as the elevator doors slid open. Gibbs strode across the bullpen scowling. McGee quickly lowered his gaze back to his monitor in a vain hope that his boss might simply ignore him.

"McGee," Gibbs barked causing the young agent to jump slightly, despite the fact that he had been expecting it, he never could seem to control the automatic response.

"Yes, Boss?" he replied tentatively.

"Where the heck are DiNozzo and David?"

"Uh. . . They're not back yet," McGee replied with a glance at his teammates' empty work spaces.

"I can see that, McGee," Gibbs said impatiently from where he was now seated at his own desk.

McGee just nodded, wondering if Gibbs was still expecting him to supply an answer, but before he could come up with anything Gibbs was talking again. "You find anything in his service records?"

"Nothing stands out," McGee answered as he hit a button and Staff Sergeant Fisher's record appeared on the plasma screen. "His unit just shipped back from Iraq about a week ago. No complaints or reprimands in his file."

McGee was cut off from the rest of his run through of the Staff Sergeant's file by the elevator opening again to reveal two rather flustered looking agents.

Tony dashed across the room to his desk, and was half way into his chair before Gibbs spoke, "Where have you been?"

Startled Tony nearly missed his chair, catching himself on the edge of his desk just in time. "Hi, Boss," he replied lightly, "Didn't see you there."

"You get anything from the bartenders?"

"Not much, one of them was friends with the vic. from school. Said he was at the bar with a co-worker last night. Another marine, Benny something."

"Benjamin Emerson?" McGee supplied from his desk where he had pulled up Fisher's unit rooster.

"Uh, sure," Tony agreed from his position still half-leaning. on his desk. "Anyway, Laney, the bartender, said that they were having a bit of a disagreement, and that Benny took off early. You want us to pick him up Boss?"

"No, we'll talk to him later, when we head back to the base to talk with the rest of his unit." Gibbs replied.

"Laney," McGee spoke up suddenly. "Would that be Laney Dawson?"

Tony cast him a skeptical look. "How would you know that, Probie?"

McGee frowned, and turned to Gibbs, "I pulled Staff Sergeant's Fisher's cell phone records and he's had a number of calls since he got back from a Laney Dawson.

"Odd," Ziva said. "She did not mention anything about having been in contact with Staff Sergeant Fisher since he got back."

"Maybe she's hiding something," Tony said in a low theatrical voice, rubbing his chin like some detective out of a mystery novel.

"That'd be your job to find out, DiNozzo," Gibbs said tersely, standing up from his desk and heading to the elevator. He passed Tony, who flinched as if expecting to get slapped over the head again, but Gibbs barely looked at him.

"Where are we going, Boss?" Tony asked, sounding decidedly relieved.

"To talk to Abby."

After a few short minutes in the elevator the four agents walked into the evidence garage to find their forensic scientist, Abigail Sciuto, seated cross legged on the floor staring at the victim's car.

"What've you got Abbs?" Gibbs asked coming to stand behind her.

"Not much," came her muted response.

From the look on Gibbs's face this was not what he wanted to hear. "Not much?" he repeated testily.

"It's weird. I mean he was suffocated in the car right? But there's no sign he struggled, and there's hardly any trace in the car at all. A few blonde hairs in the front, probably from the victim, and nothing in the back. There were some long brown hairs in the passenger seat, though."

"Wife's blonde," Gibbs said.

"Affair? Bartender's a brunette." Tony suggested.

Abby shrugged. "Could be. I found some prints on the passenger side door, but I haven't had a chance to run them yet." She sighed and gestured over to a table she had set up with a few evidence bags, "And what little you guys brought back from the scene really just looks like trash from a parking lot. Nothing stands out anyway."

"There was nothing there," McGee blurted awkwardly, feeling the sudden need to defend the evidence collected from the scene, seeing as he had been the one to do it. "Uh, around the car or the lot, Boss," he added, sweating a little under Gibbs's stare. "I checked thoroughly!"

"Yeah, but did you really need to send me candy wrappers?" Abby asked, not seeming to sense McGee's acute discomfort with the way Gibbs was looking at him.

He struggled to come up with a halfway decent explanation. "I thought they were near the car so we might pull the killer's DNA or prints off them... if it belonged to the killer, that is."

"Candy wrappers, McGee?" Abby repeated, armsakimbo as if she was a mother reprimanding a small child for tracking dirt through the house. She held up the offending evidence bag and shook it for further emphasis.

"Hey! That's my favourite brand of gum!" Tony said brightly.

"Can we focus, please?" Gibbs barked loudly. Tony snapped back into business mode while McGee flinched and squished his arms to his sides as if trying to make himself very small. Abby continued almost as if nothing had happened.

"It gets even weirder. Ducky didn't send me any fibers. I mean I suppose maybe the vic. was suffocated with plastic or something, but still the killer had to leave something behind! A hair, a fiber from his sleeve, _something_. It's like the killer is some kind of ghost!"

"Abby," Gibbs said warningly.

"I know, I know, Gibbs. But still, no forensics? How can someone suffocate a trained marine without transferring something to the victim?"

"Perhaps Staff Sergeant Fisher was drugged? It would explain his inability to defend himself." Ziva offered.

"Yeah, Ducky sent me blood samples, but I haven't had a chance to run them yet." Abby explained.

"Let me know what you find," Gibbs said as he turned and headed back to the elevator.

"Where to now?" Tony asked as he started to follow.

"I'm getting coffee."

"Ah." Tony moved aside as his boss moved briskly past him.

Gibbs was in a bad mood for the rest of the day, if Gibbs in a bad mood could be considered any different from how Gibbs usually was. He ordered his team around, sending them off to research everyone Staff Sergeant Fisher had known, everything he had done in Iraq, everywhere he might have been in the week since he had gotten back. In a desperate attempt to get something done, Tony goaded McGee into looking up the deaths the bar's manager had mentioned offhand, but it was completely unrelated – a murder-suicide, both victims had been shot and it had happened five years ago.

Around six o'clock Tony and Ziva went home. McGee dithered around for a little while, still feeling that he had gotten on his boss's bad side that day, but eventually he turned in as well. Gibbs was left sitting alone at his desk, still going over reports of the other members of the dead marine's unit. Nothing in their records stood out, not even in Sergeant Emerson's, who the bartender had claimed Fisher argued with. At the moment, that seemed like their only lead.

It was getting late at night and the office was nearly empty when Gibbs finally left.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: Yeah, we swear that Sam and Dean will show up some time in this story, eventually. We made it a cross over for a reason!


	5. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer**: Wish we did, but we don't. Dude, did that even make any sense?

WARNING: We have spent too much time in Chemistry classes. This does not mean we actually know anything about Chemistry. Good day.

* * *

Staff Sergeant Fisher's unit had seven other members including Sergeant Benjamin Emerson. Gibbs took Tony and questioned him first, leaving Ziva and McGee to interview the remaining members.

Sergeant Emerson was a tall stocky man with the standard marine buzz cut. His mouth seemed permanently twisted in a grim frown, whether or not this was due to the death of his friend or something else was hard to tell. "What happened to Alex was unfortunate," he said.

"You knew each other well?" Gibbs asked, noting the first-name usage. A lot of men who met and befriended each other in the corps tended to continue referring to each other by rank or surname out of habit. Tony was making more of a note out of the word 'unfortunate' and how it seemed a slight understatement considering Staff Sergeant Fisher was dead.

"Well enough, I guess," Sergeant Emerson stated. So far he did not seem like the chatty type. "I introduced him to his wife." He frowned at the memory, as if he regretted it.

"One of the bartenders mentioned you and Staff Sergeant Fisher seemed to be having a disagreement on the night he died," Tony interjected.

Sergeant Emerson looked grumpier than before, or perhaps that was just the way his face looked when he was confused. He pursed his lips and shook his head. "I don't know what you mean. Alex and I were pretty squared off since we got back from Iraq." He hesitated as if this were not quite true, but didn't add anything else.

"Did anything happen while you were in Iraq?" Gibbs asked, sensing a possible lead.

He might not have been too far off from the way the sergeant hesitated again. He fumbled over his next few words. "Well it was just – I mean, he's dead now. It's not important anymore." For the first time he looked truly upset.

"Any information you have could be important," Tony said, hoping he was not making them sound too desperate, "We need to know of any enemies he might have had, anything that might have gone on while he was away from home."

Sergeant Emerson ran a hand over his short hair, looking strained. He seemed to be cracking. "It's not like – I don't see how – She doesn't even _know_. . ."

"Who doesn't know what, Sergeant?" Gibbs asked shortly, his patience wearing thin.

The sergeant sighed, looking around as if he thought he might be overheard. "While we were overseas Alex had an affair. I'm positive his wife doesn't know, but it wasn't a big secret from us," he gestured slightly towards the rest of the unit. He fidgeted, as if he wasn't sure whether or not to tell them anymore, but he kept going, "And then the other night at the bar, he was flirting pretty openly with that bartender. We hadn't even been home for a week! I was just. . . I introduced them. I didn't like to see that."

Gibbs nodded. Affairs were usually a good start, right up near the top on the list of reasons to kill someone. "Is there anyone else who would have known about this? Anyone who had a problem with it?"

"I don't think so," Sergeant Emerson replied. He seemed to hunch over now, as if he had been carrying a great burden and had finally let go of some of it.

"What about the other woman?" Gibbs asked. Which would make sense, since it was difficult to have an affair without another person involved. Tony nearly grinned. They might just have a new suspect.

Sergeant Emerson seemed surprised, as if it had never occurred to him to think of her. "As far as I know her unit is still stationed in Iraq. Doesn't come back for a couple more months."

Scratch that part about a new suspect. Gibbs looked grouchier than ever.

Sergeant Emerson did not have anything enlightening to say after that. They interviewed the rest of the unit systematically, going over all the basic questions. All they determined was that aside from cheating on his wife, Alex Fisher was a generally well-liked guy. Also, apparently Ziva and McGee had had a very in depth conversation with one of corporals about a corrupt CIA conspiracy to prolong the war in Iraq for profit, but they were fairly certain (make that _very_ certain after Gibbs glared at them) that this had no bearing on their case.

With what little they had learned from Fisher's unit, the team headed back to the office. Gibbs had McGee pull the service record of the corporal who had been involved with Fisher, to confirm she had not yet returned to the states.

"What about the bartender?" McGee suggested, "She's a brunette, and Tony said they were flirting."

"No good, McGeek," Tony answered leaning back in his desk chair, "She and the other bartender were working 'til two. They alibi each other."

"Perhaps the wife is not as unaware as Sergeant Emerson believes?" Ziva offered as Gibbs' desk phone rang.

"Gibbs," he said in his customary gruff tone.

"Nice to talk to you too, Gibbs." Abby's cheerful voice came over the line.

"Abbs, have you got something for me?"

"I'm disappointed Gibbs." Abby said playfully, "I expected you to be down here already, I mean my tox. results came in nearly ten minutes ago."

"We're on our way," Gibbs replied dropping the receiver back into place before Abby could respond.

The blaring music of Abby's lab quickly disappeared as Gibbs strode purposefully past the stereo and tapped the power button. His team followed close behind and Abby turned from her computer as they entered.

"What have you got, Abbs?" Gibbs asked again.

"Tox. came back," Abby replied waving a computer print out, "Elevated levels of alcohol," she recited, "but then that's to be expected, as you found him outside a bar."

"Abby." Gibbs interrupted.

"Right. The alcohol levels aren't what you wanted, not nearly high enough to be fatal. What's interesting is he had unusually high levels of Antimony in his system."

"Heavy metal poisoning?" Ziva questioned confused, "I thought Ducky determined he died from asphyxiation."

"He did."

"But—" McGee stammered.

"I said he had high levels," Abby said cutting him off, "Not fatal, but noticeably higher than normal."

"So what? Someone was poisoning him, but then he got himself killed before they could kill him?" McGee asked incredulously

"Or the killer got impatient," Ziva added.

"Antimony?" Tony said from across the lab, where he was looking at Abby's newest piece of 'art'. "What ever happened to good old mercury or lead?"

"Convenience?" McGee suggested turning to Abby, "What's antimony used for?"

"A bunch of things, batteries, semi-conductors, tracer ammo, soldering. And some antimony compounds are used to make flame retardants and ceramic enamels."

"Some of his unit should have access to tracer ammo," Tony said.

"Look into that," Gibbs directed before softening his tone, "Good work Abbs."

"Not really Gibbs. I mean even if you find the person who was poisoning him, it doesn't mean they were the one who suffocated him," Abby replied with a sigh. The four agents were already halfway to the exit of her lab.

"Keep me posted," Gibbs called back as if she had not spoken, before he flipped her music back on and disappeared after his team.

A haggard young agent was waiting for them back in the bullpen. She approached Gibbs timidly. "Um, sir?"

"Special Agent Gibbs," Gibbs corrected sharply, "Don't call me sir."

"Sorry, sir – I mean, Agent Gibbs, sir," the junior agent stammered.

"What is it?" Gibbs asked impatiently.

"There's someone here to see you. I think—"

But she didn't get to elaborate. At that point the manager of the bar burst through the doors of the office. Two other agents were trying to hold him back, but he was clearly irate.

"I want to speak to the agents who put crime tape all around my establishment!" he shouted, "I thought it would be taken down by now. This is outrageous! I'm losing business!"

"You need to calm down, sir," one of the agents told him.

"You!" He pointed at Gibbs, recognizing him. "When can I have my bar open again? Every day that it's closed I lose money!"

"That's not really our problem," Gibbs told him flatly. He was not really known for making the most politic statements.

"Not – how do – who—" The man spluttered and his face turned beet red. "Listen, I have a lot of money invested in this!"

Gibbs sighed. They really didn't have time for this. "Like I said – not our problem. We're very busy at the moment. I'm sure our director would be happy to talk to you instead."

Tony, McGee and Ziva all exchanged looks. None of them really thought that Director Shepard would actually be 'happy' to talk to this guy. The manager, however, seemed rather pleased at the possibility of getting to talk to someone even higher on the chain of command. His chest puffed out importantly and he said, "Is that so? I guess that will do."

"McGee," Gibbs ordered, "Take this man to Director Shepard's office."

McGee jumped, eyes bulging wide as if to silently say, _Me? Why me?_Out loud all he could muster was a feeble "Uh, Boss?" while Tony snickered not so subtly behind him.

"Now, McGee," Gibbs said, leaving no room for argument.

McGee shuffled nervously toward the bar owner and led him up the stairs to the director's office. He couldn't quell the feeling of dread as he neared her office, knowing that she would not be pleased. The bar's owner kept 'humphing' and 'harrumphing' behind him, adjusting his collar and his tie self-importantly, and McGee found he couldn't wait to be rid of him.

The secretary waved them in, and for a fleeting moment McGee thought he wouldn't have to face the director. He could just leave the man with the secretary and slink off, and maybe Gibbs would assign him to some menial computer task. . . but then Jenny Shepard walked out into the waiting room.

"Are you the director of this agency?" the man called before McGee could even have a chance to make up some sort of explanation. Director Shepard looked at him, then at McGee. McGee did not fail to notice that her eyes narrowed with annoyance.

"Yes, I am," she said curtly, "How can I help you?"

The manager immediately launched into a tirade about all the money this investigation was costing him, how NCIS wasn't doing anything about it, and particularly how rude Agent Gibbs was. McGee cringed and hoped that maybe Director Shepard would focus on that last part rather than the fact the McGee had brought this man to her office.

"This bar is important to me!" the man went on, "I bought it with the money I inherited from my uncle, and now it's going to waste!"

McGee could hear Gibbs barking his name from downstairs, and for once it was a relief. He took the opportunity to scuttle out of the director's office, and hoped she would not remember the next time she saw him. If only he could be so lucky.

"It seems that the only ones in Staff Sergeant Fisher's unit with access to tracer ammo containing Antimony compounds was the Staff Sergeant himself and his good old buddy Sergeant Emerson," Tony was saying. He was standing in front of the screen where they had brought up Sergeant Emerson's profile, and grinned at McGee as he stumbled down the stairs into the bullpen. "Easy there, Probie."

McGee glared at him.

"So Sergeant Emerson had access to the heavy metal which poisoned our dead marine," Gibbs reiterated, not seeming to notice the exchange between DiNozzo and McGee, or even that McGee had returned.

"But we still don't know how he died," Ziva pointed out, "Ducky concluded that Staff Sergeant Fisher suffocated, not that he was poisoned. The poison may have had nothing to do with his death."

"It's worth checking out," Gibbs said tersely.

What he probably didn't want to say was that they had no other leads.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: *whistling innocently*


	6. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer**: If we owned any of them Tiva would probably be a canon pairing by now and Sam and Dean would never wear shirts.

* * *

They intended to talk to Sergeant Emerson first thing the following morning, but Abby got to them first. She called Gibbs, who had the entire team down in the garage again no sooner than he had hung up with Abby.

"What's going on, Boss?" Tony asked.

"Ask Abby," Gibbs replied.

Abby was decked in grey mechanic coveralls. Her hair was in braided pigtails today. She had the hood of the old station wagon propped up so that the engine was exposed. It looked like she, or someone at least, had been tinkering around with it. She gestured toward it with both arms in a sort of 'taa-daa!' motion.

"I thought it was pretty hinky that there wasn't too much forensics in the car," she explained when neither Gibbs nor any of the other agents seemed to infer what she was showing them. "So I went back and checked it out again, and I found out the engine didn't start. That's pretty weird right? So I looked under the hood and – whoooooa!"

"Whoa what, Abbs?" Gibbs asked.

"The entire engine's been messed with," Abby said, gesturing to it again. "Even if your staff sergeant hadn't dropped dead, there's no way he wouldn't have gotten his car out of the lot. It wouldn't even have started!"

"Wait, so he was not only poisoned and suffocated somehow, but someone also tampered with his vehicle?" Ziva asked.

"Someone sure was out to get this guy," Tony said.

"That's not all," said Abby proudly. "I found two sets of prints on the hood of the car and one set on the wires around the engine. So I ran them, and one comes back to your dead staff sergeant, but the other set of prints, the ones on the hood and on the wires, came back to Sergeant Benjamin Emerson."

Tony whistled. "Emerson is starting to look really good for this."

"Good work, Abbs," Gibbs said, ignoring Tony.

"Why thank you, Gibbs!" Abby chirped. "I deserve a raise don't I? Coming in early and figuring all this out?" She winked at him.

Gibbs shook his head, but there was a ghost of a grin on his face. "You'll get your Caff-Pow as soon as we bring Sergeant Emerson in."

Abby pumped her fist in victory as the team filed out the door.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Sergeant Benjamin Emerson was not hard to find, nor did he seem especially surprised when they brought him in for questioning. He sat in the interrogation room with a grim but resigned look on his face. Gibbs dropped a file unceremoniously on his desk and for a while the two simply stared at each other.

"There's nothing really in that file," Tony whispered to Ziva. "Gibbs just does that to be intimidating."

"You've said that before, Tony." Ziva said, not sounding like she much believed him, "And why are you whispering?"

Tony frowned, looked around the otherwise empty observation room, and shrugged.

Back in the interrogation room, Gibbs spoke first. "Do you know why you're here, Sergeant?"

"Ah," Tony said smugly, "The old headmaster technique. 'Do you know why you're in my office son'?" he said it in a gruff voice and the next part in a high squeak, "'No sir, no idea sir, honest, I swear!'"

Ziva rolled her eyes.

Sergeant Emerson, who fortunately could not hear them, said nothing.

Gibbs opened his file, which as it so happened was not entirely empty. He produced a photo of the fingerprints Abby had recovered from the car. "Your fingerprints on Staff Sergeant Fisher's vehicle. Around the engine, which was tampered with. Care to explain that, Sergeant?"

Apparently Sergeant Emerson did not, as he continued to say nothing. His grip on the chair tightened, and his mouth pressed into an even thinner line.

"Okay," Gibbs said, sounding surprisingly patiently for Gibbs. He produced another page from the file, making Tony's earlier claim seem rather silly. It was a copy of Sergeant Emerson's record showing his clearance status. "How about the Antimony compound that was used to poison Staff Sergeant Fisher?"

Sergeant Emerson didn't say anything, although something like uncertainty flickered in his eyes.

Gibbs went on, "Antimony is commonly used in tracer ammunition, Sergeant. Ammunition which, according to your record, you have access to. If you don't want to talk, that's fine. I'd say the evidence is telling a pretty good story all by itself."

Sergeant Emerson's mouth finally opened. And then shut, and opened again a few more times, like he was completely lost for words. It took him a few more moments to compose himself. "If you think I had something to do with Alex's death—"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking, Sergeant," Gibbs said.

"I didn't!" Sergeant Emerson cried. "You have to believe me!"

"Man, everyone and their dog says that," Tony commented to Ziva. "Let me guess, this is the part where he claims to know nothing about the car."

Ziva shook her head. "Is that your best guess, Tony? I'm disappointed. My money's in poison."

Tony grinned. "_On_ poison, Ziva. Although knowing you, I wouldn't be surprised if you laced your cash with some nasty stuff. . ."

"Only if I was using it to pay you, Tony."

Tony's smile didn't falter. "And how much are you going to pay me, exactly? He's going to feign ignorance on the car. I'm never wrong about these things."

Ziva cocked an eyebrow appraisingly. "Hmm. . . I think that you will be paying me twenty, Tony."

"Twenty it is," said Tony cheerfully. "I can buy myself the next issue of sports illustrated."

"You know I'd like to believe you, Sergeant," Gibbs was saying. "But you haven't given me much of a reason."

Sergeant Emerson sighed and pressed his hands to his forehead. "It's just that – I mean, I knew what was going on. Charlotte is a friend. I _introduced_ them. I couldn't let Alex keep doing this crap behind her back."

Gibbs raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So you tampered with his car and poisoned him with Antimony, Sergeant?"

"No!" Sergeant Emerson said quickly, "I mean, yes – part of that, but not. . ."

Gibbs waited patiently for Sergeant Emerson to elaborate. Unknown to him, two other agents waited much less patiently in the other room. But even if he had known, he couldn't have picked a more roundabout way to explain himself. "I know I shouldn't have done it, sir. It was a low thing to do. Alex was my best friend, even after all. . . even if. . . I just thought if he didn't come home for a few nights, Charlotte would start to suspect him for what he really was, and maybe she'd leave him. They'd be better off apart, so. . ."

"So?" Gibbs repeated purposefully.

"So I messed up his car," Sergeant Emerson said heavily. "But I swear, I have no idea how he was poisoned."

"You're going to have to give me more than that, Sergeant," Gibbs told him.

Sergeant Emerson had slouched back in his chair, looking tired and defeated. "That's all I know, sir."

Try as he might, Gibbs could not get Sergeant Emerson to admit to anything other than tampering with the car. They were left without a solid confession, and no substantial evidence that the sergeant had actually done the poisoning – which may or may not have contributed to their victim's death in the first place.

Tony was sulking in the bullpen when Gibbs returned. Ziva was standing by McGee's desk with a slightly crumpled twenty-dollar bill in hand.

"Would you like to get a gelato, McGee? I've never tried one. It's Tony's treat." She flashed a sly grin in DiNozzo's direction.

"Ice-cream breaks can wait," Gibbs said tersely. Ziva quickly folded the bill away and McGee straightened up. Tony continued to sulk.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs snapped, "Take McGee and go back to the bar. I want you to see if you can find any evidence that Staff Sergeant Fisher was poisoned there. David, go check if Ducky has any updates on cause of death."

His team hurried off to carry out their orders. Gibbs had likely intended to do something useful himself, but no sooner had he turned from his desk when he was cornered by Jenny Shepard. To say she looked unhappy might have been an understatement. Possibly a very big understatement.

"What was the deal with sending that irate manager into my office yesterday, Jethro?" she demanded.

He had actually forgotten all about that, but he wisely chose not to say so. Whoever said he didn't have any diplomatic skills? "Can't we talk about this later?"

The answer was no, they could not. Gibbs resigned himself to a long lecture, and hoped silently that someone from his team would come back with some sort of lead soon.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Tony's mood had improved considerably by the time they reached the parking lot. He was whistling something that sounded suspiciously like 'It's a small world' as he drove. As far as McGee was concerned, Tony did this solely to annoy him.

"The world doesn't revolve around you, Probie," was Tony's reply when McGee brought it up. After that, there was absolutely no doubt in McGee's mind that Tony was whistling to the tune of small world. And he was whistling it louder than before to boot.

The manager had been permitted to reopen his establishment by Director Shepard, but despite that there were very few cars parked around the bar when they got there. Maybe news of the Staff Sergeant's death really was keeping customers away, but then again, it was still early in the afternoon. Most people didn't start hitting the pubs until later in the evening.

McGee was hoping to get this over with as soon as possible. He really wasn't looking forward to running into the bar's owner again, assuming the man was around. He was out the car first and already halfway to the door. Tony, as if sensing McGee's discomfort in a way only Tony could, took his sweet time. He swung the sedan's door open lazily and dragged his feet as he stepped away from the parking stall. And then he just _stopped_. He stared off at something across the parking lot with a wide feral grin on his face that McGee did not like at all.

"Tony, can we get a move on?" he said, trying his best not to show how anxious he was. "Gibbs probably wants us to report back, oh I don't know, sometime this year?"

In a move that was typical DiNozzo, Tony completely ignored him. "Oh she's nice. Make that very nice," he was saying. "Classic beauty. I'd love to take her out for a ride. . ."

"Are you checking out some woman?" McGee asked incredulously. It was either that or a sports car, with Tony McGee never could tell. "We don't have time for this, Tony!"

"C'mon Probie," Tony said, "You don't see a baby like this everyday."

It was definitely a car. McGee had already spotted it by the time Tony crossed over to him, but for reasons that were lost to him he allowed Tony to sling an arm around his shoulder and steer him so he was looking directly at it. It was one of those old muscle cars, probably at least thirty years old, though it was well polished and shiny black and chrome. It was parked in the far corner of the lot. McGee had not given it much thought when they passed it before, but obviously Tony had noticed.

"That, my dear deprived McGeek, is a '67 Chevy Impala. Or possibly '68, but definitely not '69. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about here. Great car, has nothing on my mustang of course, but still. Take a good look Probie, this could be the first and last time you ever see one."

"I _know_ what an impala is, Tony," McGee said with exasperation. "And believe it or not, I have seen one before."

"Are you sure?" Tony asked gleefully, "Don't get it confused with the antelope now. I know how you geeks are."

"Look, we don't have time for this," McGee told him irritably. "We're supposed to be checking out the bar for evidence that Sergeant Emerson poisoned Staff Sergeant Fisher."

"Of course, oh great and mighty Elflord! We must continue upon our mission," Tony ribbed.

Deciding not to dignify Tony's childish comment with a response McGee twisted out from under his partner's arm and headed for the bar. A moment later Tony hurried after him.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: We are aware that a black '67 Chevy Impala is not a character by itself and that its appearance in this story does not qualify as a crossover. Really.


	7. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer**: If we owned any of them cracked out crossovers like this might actually happen. Be thankful we don't own anything, peoples.

* * *

Tony leaned back in his chair and sighed dramatically. The trip to the bar had been bust, more or less. There was absolutely nothing there to indicate that anyone whatsoever had been poisoned, or even drugged. "So Emerson has access to the Antimony, but we've got no proof he actually has any, or used it."

"We have no proof that he is not the poisoner either," Ziva countered from her position perched on the edge of her desk. "And he did admit to tampering with Staff Sergeant Fisher's vehicle."

McGee nodded. "Which means we can't exclude him, but maybe we should consider other people near Staff Sergeant Fisher who have access to the element." Turning back to his computer McGee pulled up the military records of Fisher's unit again.

The three agents had returned to the bullpen only to find their boss absent. After a quick information swap, it had been clear they knew as much as they had an hour ago. Which left them where they were now, talking their way through the case in an attempt to find something, _anything, _before Gibbs chose to materialize.

"Perhaps it is not a team member," Ziva suggested moving across the bullpen to look over McGee's shoulder. "What other uses did Abby say this Antimony has?"

"Uh, lets see." Tony muttered leaning forward in his chair and tapping a pencil nosily on his desk, "Some type of conductor thing."

"Semi-conductors," McGee supplied helpfully.

"Yeah, and um, flame retardants, pottery glazes-"

"Enamels," McGee cut in again.

"And batteries," Tony announced as though McGee had not spoken.

"Batteries are very common,"Ziva said.

"Antimony is used to harden the lead in storage batteries," McGee clarified with a quick internet search, "It would be near impossible to remove the antimony and use it to poison someone."

"What about the pottery stuff." Tony asked, "Maybe the wife or the bartender has a hobby?"

Ziva gave Tony a questioning look, "I thought the bartender had an alibi?"

"For the murder," Tony agreed, "but that doesn't mean she couldn't have slipped some Antimony into his beer at the bar. Though I really didn't get the impression she was hiding anything when we talked to her," he added.

"Hey guys?" McGee interrupted. "The wife runs a small home business, one of the things she sells? Pottery."

"Bingo!" Tony said triumphantly, "Maybe she knew about the affair after all."

"Even so, that doesn't prove she killed him. Ducky said COD was asphyxiation right?" McGee asked.

"Yes," Ziva replied, "So even if we can connect her to the poison, that does not prove she was even at the bar that night."

"Really what are the odds that his 'best friend' tampers with his car, while he is slowly being poisoned, possibly by his own wife, only to be killed but a third unrelated mystery suspect?" Tony muttered to no one in particular.

"Stranger things have happened," Ziva commented dryly.

Tony just shrugged, "If so, the guy is one unlucky SOB."

"You know," McGee said thoughtfully, "She said she was home alone all night. She could have followed him to the bar."

"And what, McGee? You told me she was scrawny and passed out in a dead faint when you talked to her. You really think she overpowered her highly-trained marine husband?"

"Her fainting could have been an act, no?" Ziva said, "It is very possible for a much smaller woman to take down a trained man," she added as she moved towards Tony with a mischievous glint in her eyes, "I could demonstrate."

Tony rolled his eyes at her, while he subtly shifted away from her, "That's okay Zee-vah, I have no doubt that you could have taken Fisher, but I'm fairly certain his suburban housewife was not trained by Mossad."

"No, but Staff Sergeant Fisher was inebriated at the time," Ziva replied grinning at Tony's discomfort. "It would have slowed his reactions considerably, and as he would not have considered his wife a threat, his guard would have been down."

"Okay, so assuming the wife poisoned him, and assuming she drastically changed tactics and followed Fisher to the bar to overpower and suffocate him. Where's the proof? All we've got is circumstantial evidence and vague possibilities."

"We need to question the wife again." McGee said. "Maybe we can get a warrant for her home?"

"I'll get Gibbs. . ." Tony spoke as he started to rise. "Uh, where _is _Gibbs?"

McGee shrugged and looked at Ziva. She shook her head looking as clueless as them, "No one was here when I got back from speaking with Ducky."

Tony glanced around the office again before sinking back into his chair, "Don't suppose we could just call it a day then?" He wondered aloud.

"Wouldn't advise it, DiNozzo," Gibbs barked as he descended the stairs from the directors office. "Report."

Ziva and McGee quickly filled their boss in on their theory while Tony sulked at his desk muttering, "How does he _always_ do that?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Tony braced himself as the sedan lurched around a corner. From years of experience, he choose to keep his comments to himself, and just be thankful it was not Ziva driving. He shifted his gaze out the window and watched the buildings rapidly fly by.

Another sharp turn brought them to the gated base entrance and forced Gibbs to pull to an abrupt halt, just long enough to flash his credentials to the guard and be waved through. Just as they pulled away a flash of black caught Tony's eye and he twisted in his seat in time to the taillights of an older car disappear out the gate in the opposite lane.

"You see that car, Boss?" Tony asked still looking back although the vehicle was gone from view. "That looked like an impala didn't it?"

A firm cuff to the back of his head was the only response he received and he turned back to the front rubbing his head. "Just asking," he muttered as Gibbs pulled the car into a empty driveway of one of the many identical houses on the street.

Together they headed up to the house, and Gibbs rapped firmly on the wooden door. A moment later it opened to reveal a rather confused looking Charlotte Fisher. "Agent Gibbs?"

"We have a few more questions to ask you Mrs. Fisher. If that's all right?" Gibbs explained in a way that suggested it really was not important if she thought it was 'all right'.

She stepped back to let them in, all the while stammering ineloquently. "I don't understand, I mean they said . . . But why are you. . ?"

"I'm sorry who said what?" Tony asked shooting a confused look to Gibbs as they followed Charlotte into her living room.

She gestured for them to sit, but both agents remained standing as she started to pace around the room. "I – the two agents. They said they were investigating. . . They just left."

"NCIS agents?" Tony said bewildered as to whom the distraught woman was speaking of.

"No, no. I was confused, because you came and spoke to me first but they said they had new information," she replied quietly.

"What information?" Gibbs cut in impatiently.

"They, uh. . . they didn't really say."

"And who exactly were they?" Gibbs asked.

"The FBI agents. They said they were looking into Alex's death. . . " She told them oblivious to the look that Gibbs and Tony exchanged. "They kept asking if he'd been acting strange. If maybe he was," She broke off with a sob, "having an affair. But it's not like I know for certain. It's just I thought maybe. . . He was gone so long and then he started going out all the time." She slumped down wearily into the sofa.

"So you suspected he was cheating on you?" Tony repeated for clarification. Charlotte nodded mutely staring down at her lap.

"But I suppose you wouldn't know about how the antimony, that you happen to have access to ended up poisoning your husband, now would you?"

Charlotte let out another sob. "Oh God," she wailed, "I never meant for this. I loved him!" she yelled looking at the two agents desperately. "I just wanted him to be with me, I didn't care if he'd strayed before I just wanted him back now that he was home. I never meant to kill him. Please, you have to believe me," she begged.

With a nod from Gibbs, Tony took Mrs. Fisher into custody and read her rights to her. She kept wailing about how she never meant for it to happen, and that she loved Alex. Tony helped her into the back of the car and turned to Gibbs, "The FBI? What's that about, did they say anything to us?"

"Nope." Gibbs replied darkly as he got in the driver's seat, slamming the door loudly. Tony so did not envy the FBI agents who had decided to waltz into Gibbs' case undeclared.

The drive back to the office was quiet, except for the occasional sob from Mrs. Fisher or, the one time she caught Tony's gaze, another declaration of her non-intentions towards her husband's death.

After placing Mrs. Fisher in an interrogation room and reminding her once more of her right to counsel, Gibbs told Tony to grab Ziva and finish taking Mrs. Fisher's confession.

"And you'll be. . . ?" Tony asked.

"Out," Gibbs replied as he strode briskly down the hall.

"Right," Tony mumbled as he made his own way back to the bullpen. McGee and Ziva looked up as he entered. "She's in interrogation, sobbing that she loved him and that she didn't mean to kill him. . . how exactly do you 'accidentally' suffocate someone?" he wondered aloud.

"I do not know. Perhaps we should ask Mrs. Fisher?" Ziva suggested rising.

"Perhaps we should," Tony agreed. The three agents headed back the way Tony had come, and leaving McGee in the observation room, Ziva and Tony strode into the small interrogation room.

"I loved him," Charlotte muttered, "I just wanted him to stay home." Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed, she had been crying on and off since Tony had first confronted her about the poison.

Ziva slid into the chair across to table, while Tony leaned against the back wall. "So you took the antimony from your pottery work?" Ziva asked trying to bring Mrs. Fisher out of her rantings.

"I loved him. I did," she insisted.

"Yes, but he cheated on you," Ziva tried again. "That must have made you angry."

Charlotte just shook her head. "I didn't care. I just wanted to be with him."

"So you poisoned him?" Tony asked, confused.

"Just to make him stay home," she rambled, "I wanted him to stay home. The antimony was supposed to make him sick, dizzy, nothing serious. I thought he'd stay home."

"But he did not stay home did he?" Ziva asked. "He went out to that bar and left you at home again."

"But I didn't want him to die," she moaned. "I didn't."

"So why did you kill him?"

"I didn't mean for it. It was just supposed to make him sick,"

"What?" Tony asked pushing away from the wall.

"The antimony. I read it should make him sick. It said there had to be a lot to hurt him. I didn't think he'd die."

"You didn't follow him that night? You didn't go to the bar?"

Charlotte shook her head again. "No. I just put the antimony in his food at home. I wanted him to be sick. . . Why do you care if I went to the bar?"

Tony sighed and looked at Ziva, "Who gets to tell Gibbs?"

"Tell Agent Gibbs what?" Charlotte asked confused.

"Mrs. Fisher," Ziva started slowly, "Your husband did not die from the poison."

"What? No – I don't understand. You said he—" She looked at Tony helplessly.

"You were home that whole night?" Tony asked again.

"Yes – I – one of the neighbours could tell you, but how, if it wasn't the poison?"

"We believe your husband was suffocated."

Charlotte stared at them wide-eyed. "Suffocated?" she squeaked, "But who would, why would?" she stammered.

"We don't know yet," Ziva told her pushing back her chair, "But we will find out."

The two agents left the room and met McGee in the hall. "This is ridiculous," Tony muttered, "Everyone was out to hurt this guy, but who finally killed him?"

"I do not know," Ziva replied.

"Well, what do we tell Gibbs?" McGee asked worriedly.

"I don't know. . . Where has he gone anyway?" Ziva wondered.

Tony shrugged. "Out," he replied.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: Well, fancy that, there's another mysterious old car driving around DC. It's totally unrelated to the impala. We swear.


	8. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer**: If we owned them then we wouldn't be broke college students.

* * *

The J. Edgar Hoover building was busy enough that afternoon. On the fourth floor bullpen, Agent Charles and Agent Carlson were busy giving a basic rundown of their latest case to their newest rookie agent, Bosley. It was a particularly nasty rash of serial killings that had broken out across the state, and so far they had few leads. Agent Sacks was buried in paperwork at his desk, ignoring the others with a grim frown.

So far the afternoon had been uneventful.

That was until the doors to the office were thrown open dramatically, and another agent came stalking into the room, looking decidedly furious. He didn't seem like FBI, but then who could tell in a building full of federal agents? His eyes darted around the room, across Agent Charles, Agent Carlson, and Agent Sacks, and even rookie Agent Bosley – but apparently he wasn't looking for any of them.

"Tobias!" he roared.

Agent Bosley looked over at Charles uncertainly. "Isn't that the boss's name?"

"Yeah, don't you pay attention," Agent Carlson said with a candid hand-wave. "This happens a lot."

"He seems really angry," Agent Bosley said. She glanced over the shoulder at the older man who had just burst through the doors, and for a minute she thought he glared at her. She turned back quickly. "Who is he?"

"Just someone Fornell pissed off," Agent Charles said with a shrug. "He has that effect on people."

Agent Tobias Fornell picked that moment to walk into the room, which was very convenient for his visitor. He looked over the man with a surprised glance that quickly turned into a suspicious glare. "Jethro? What the hell do you want?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Gibbs snapped. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Fornell raised an eyebrow. "What the hell do you think I did?"

"This is normal?" Agent Bosley asked in a low voice. The other two agents looked at her, looked over at where Gibbs and their boss were arguing, and shrugged.

"Happens all the time," Agent Charles said.

"Care to explain exactly what business the FBI has butting into _my_ case?" Gibbs demanded.

"What case?" Fornell asked, "I don't even know what NCIS is working right now."

"Don't play dumb with me, Tobias," Gibbs growled. "I have a witness in custody who claims your people were questioning her."

Fornell glanced around the bullpen. By now their conversation had even attracted the attention of Agent Sacks, as well as various other agents around the room. It was no small testament to their fear of Fornell that they all furiously tried to appear as if they were working on something, rather than eavesdropping.

"Maybe we should continue this conversation in my office, Jethro," Fornell offered.

"You think?" Gibbs asked, but he did not look like he was in a chatty mood.

Bosley watched as the two senior agents left the room, and something puzzling occurred to her. "Isn't Agent Fornell's office in the opposite direction?"

Agent Carlson hardly spared a glance. "Better not to ask," he told her succinctly.

Meanwhile, Gibbs looked skeptically around the elevator that he had followed Fornell into. It was shiner than the NCIS one, with marble floors and a finished wood railing. If he had particularly cared, he might have wondered if Fornell was trying to show off. As it was, he didn't care.

"Don't you have a bigger office than this, Tobias?"

The lines on Fornell's stern face broke in a half-smile. "Well, this is the first time you've ever paid us the courtesy of visiting, Jethro. I thought you'd appreciate some place a little more familiar."

Gibbs ignored the jab. His 'office' served all the purpose it needed. "I'm serious here. What the hell are your people up to?"

Fornell sighed, and the brief smile vanished. "I don't own the entire goddamn FBI, Jethro. Hell if I know what our people were doing with your case. Like I said before, I don't even know what your case is."

"Marine murdered in a bar parking lot," Gibbs replied gruffly. He didn't feel like mentioning that they were having fewer and fewer leads to go on. He was in a bad enough mood as it was.

Fornell ran a hand along his chin. "That sounds like your jurisdiction," he said finally, "I have no idea why the FBI would bother with it."

Gibbs continued to glare at him.

"Look," Fornell told him, "I can look into it for you. But I don't know anything about this. Haven't heard anything at all."

Gibbs glared some more, but finally looked away with a resigned frown. "You do that, then," he said stiffly. "I want to know everything your people have been doing with regards to my case."

Fornell held his hands up. "I'm not making any promises. I'll do what I can, that's all."

When Agent Bosley saw Gibbs storm back through the office again, he was in no better mood than when he had arrived.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

The next couple days went by uneventfully. Try as they might, the NCIS team was unable to uncover any more leads, and the case was starting to run cold. They had enough evidence to hold both Charlotte Fisher and Benjamin Emerson in custody, but not enough evidence to actually convict either of them for murder. Tony, Ziva and McGee spent the next two days confined to the office, sleeping at their desks, eating squishy take-out burritos, and generally wearing away on each other's nerves.

Gibbs was in a worse mood than ever, and said very little to any of them. His mood was not improved when Fornell called that Friday and informed him that he had found nothing going on in the FBI concerning their case. In fact, there was no one in the FBI that was even concerned with any of NCIS's active cases at the moment.

"Then what the hell is going on?" Gibbs snapped loudly, making McGee jump up in his seat and Tony drop the pen lid he had been about to flick at Ziva

"I've done all I can, Jethro," Fornell said in a surprising display of patience.

It was beginning to seem to Gibbs's team that they might never get to leave the office again. It was late Friday night and they had already exhausted all possible sources of leads they could come up with, not to mention finishing any excess paperwork they might have had lying around, so as to make it seem that they were doing something. It had been nearly a week since they had started working on this case, and even though none of them had the nerve to say so in front of Gibbs, they were all thinking that they had reached a dead end.

Tony was slouched at his desk, not even trying to keep up the semblance of doing work. McGee fidgeted nervously, having already reconfigured the operating system on his computer in a hopeless attempt at making it look like he was doing something useful. Ziva had her headphones on and her head occasionally bobbed down toward her desk before jerking back up again suddenly, on the verge of falling asleep.

Gibbs snapped shut the folder he had been studying for the better part of half and hour. The force of his actions may as well have sent shock waves across the room, because all three of his agents immediately straightened up in their desks and turned to him, waiting expectantly.

Their boss did not look at any of them, nor did he get up from his desk. The room was so quiet that his next order cut through clearly even though it was not said very loud. "Go home."

There was a further moment of silence, where the three of them looked between each other as if looking for a sign, trying to determine that they were not, in fact, hearing things.

Tony was the first to finally react. He grabbed his backpack from beside his desk and bolted for the elevator, as though afraid Gibbs would suddenly change his mind. His movement stirred the other two agents into action and they quickly followed suit, grabbing their belongings and making a bee-line for the exit.

As the elevator doors closed the three agents let out a collective breath. "I was beginning to think we'd never leave," Tony muttered leaning against the back wall.

Ziva mumbled something and rested her head against the wall, her eyes shut.

Tony gave her a questioning look. "You going to make it home?"

"Mm-hmmm," She murmured sleepily. "My bed is there."

"Uh," McGee began, "What time do you think Gibbs expects us in tomorrow?"

"I don't know McGee, and I don't care," Tony replied. "I am not coming back until I've had a good eight, no ten hours of sleep. Maybe a whole day."

"Gibbs isn't going to like that."

"Does it matter?" Ziva asked, "It is clear we are not going to make further progress on this case. Not with the information available to us."

"Yeah," McGee agreed as the elevator doors opened to reveal the parking level.

"Later," Tony called as he took off towards his sorely neglected mustang. Ziva mumbled a response and stumbled off to her own car, leaving McGee momentarily alone at the elevator until he too headed for home.

After all, the case was not going anywhere.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: . . . No comment.


	9. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer**: If we owned them. . . it's chapter eight right? You guys get the picture.

* * *

A loud ringing noise shattered the silence in Tony's apartment, causing the sleeping agent to wake with a start. Still fully-clothed from the previous night, having been too exhausted to do more than kick his shoes off before collapsing onto his bed, Tony rolled over and reached out to stop the alarm. Misjudging the distance, his arm met air and he rolled off the edge of his mattress, landing on the floor with a thud.

The ringing stopped and Tony glared accusingly at his alarm clock. The digital read-out informed him that it was twelve after four. Tony groaned, leaned his head against the wall, and was nearly asleep again when the ringing returned.

Finally deciding he would never, at least not while in his right mind, set his alarm for twelve after four in the morning, he looked around wondering where he had left his cellphone.

The phone rang again, and he finally looked down to find his phone in its case attached to his belt. He tugged the offending object free. "What?" he moaned.

"Get your gear, we've got another body," Gibbs order through the phone, sounding disturbingly awake.

"It's four am, Boss," Tony complained, already getting up and searching around for his shoes.

"Call Ziva and McGee," Gibbs continued as though Tony had not spoken. "Body's out in the parking lot of that bar."

"I'll be there in—" Tony started to say, until he realized the line had gone dead. He sighed and decided that since the guy was already dead he could wait until Tony had showered and was wearing clean clothes. He headed for his closet, dialing his team mates while he searched in a desperate hope to find something that was not in need of washing.

Neither McGee or Ziva sounded particularly pleased to hear from him. Nor did they sound very awake, which made Tony feel marginally better. However the mere thought of going back out to that bar, in the middle of the night, to stare at another dead body while Gibbs breathed down their necks killed any pleasure he might get from his co-workers' misery.

"At least it's not raining," Tony mumbled as he drove to the crime scene, his hair damp from his all too brief shower. The coffee he had grabbed on his way was doing little to wake him up, and he was glad the bar was not too far, or he might have fallen asleep at the wheel.

McGee was already there with Gibbs and Ducky when Tony arrived. Ziva showed up about ten minutes later. The scene itself was eerily familiar. Not that Staff Sergeant Fisher and the now deceased Lieutenant Erickson looked anything alike, but the positioning of the body was nearly identical. Neither bore any defensive wounds, and both were slumped in the driver's seat of their car. Or, in Erickson's case, the front seat of his pick-up truck.

The bar had closed for the night, but Laney the bartender had found Erickson's body when she had headed to her car after cleaning up. She stood a few feet away watching them wide-eyed. Gibbs sent Ziva over to take her statement.

Tony began to photograph the scene while McGee began evidence collection. He did not appear to be having much more luck than he had had at the previous scene. They would not know for sure until Abby had worked her magic, but it was clear they all suspected there would be very little forensics.

Ducky sighed, and stood up from the truck wiping his brow. "It seems this young man suffocated as well. Of course, I won't be able to tell for certain until we get back to autopsy, but the body is in virtually the same condition as our last victim." His tone was almost apologetic. Gibbs did not seem pleased.

"You thinking possible serial killer, Boss?" Tony offered.

Gibbs grunted, and moved off to the other side of the truck to examine something. Clearly he was at least as tired as the rest of them, and likely grumpier than ever.

"If it is a serial killer," Ducky said, "This is one of the most methodical I've encountered. I've never seen a murder that left the body so clean. Mind you, there was that one time I was in Cumbria and a woman was poisoned by a chemical lining her bedsheets. Now, that was before the days of advanced toxicology screenings, but it seemed at the time as if she'd simply died in her sleep and there were no marks or signs to tell otherwise."

"I'm pretty sure we've ruled out poison, Ducky," Tony said patiently.

"Maybe not entirely," McGee called wearily from the passenger seat. He looked like he had yet to bag anything useful, still keeping in mind Abby's last comment about 'trash from a parking lot'. "It could be something airborne that metabolizes fast."

"Like carbon monoxide poisoning?" Tony offered.

Ducky shook his head. "That would have caused our victims to turn rather pink, I'm afraid."

McGee sighed. "What kind of killer goes after trained marines? They're not the easiest targets."

"Maybe the killer is highly trained as well," Ziva said, coming up to the truck. "It could explain the lack of evidence left behind."

"Great, we're dealing with a hit man or something," Tony muttered.

"What do this victim and Staff Seargent Fisher even have in common?" Ziva wondered, drawing the three of them back to the body.

Lieutenant Erickson was a large black man in his early to mid-thirties. He was dressed completely differently from how they had found Staff Sergeant Fisher, wearing a more casual solid black sports jacket and dark jeans instead of his uniform. There was no wedding band on his finger, only a beaded bracelet on his right wrist.

Finally, after much hesitation, McGee said, "They're both marines..."

"And male," Tony chimed in, a bit lamely.

"And married," Gibbs added, returning to the front of the truck.

"Boss, there's no ring," Tony said.

In response Gibbs held up a plain gold ring, and then held it out to McGee who rushed over to bag it. "Found it on the ground near the truck," he told them.

"How do you know it belongs to our victim?" Tony asked.

"There's an inscription on the inside: Jason and Melanie. If I'm not mistaken, that's Lieutenant _Jason_ Erickson. The lieutenant must have dropped it before getting into the truck."

"Perhaps it came off when he was attacked?" Ziva asked.

Tony shook his head. "If he was attacked outside the truck, how likely is it that he ended up getting in the driver's seat before he died? I mean, he's even got his seatbelt on."

"Besides," McGee added bitterly, "There doesn't seem to be any signs that there was a struggle." He refrained from adding that there weren't many signs of anything at this crime scene, other than they had another dead man who had mysteriously suffocated in his own vehicle.

"What did the bartender have to say?" Gibbs pressed Ziva.

"Not very much. She did not know this man like she knew Alex Fisher and she only saw him at the bar a few times that night. She did mention he was with a red-haired woman, but they left separately."

"If he was married, why would he and his wife leave separately?" McGee asked.

"Maybe she wasn't his wife," Tony said.

"Oh dear," Ducky said. "One should never go to pubs without one's wife. Especially with a woman who is not one's wife. You know, my cousin tried that once when he was in Edinburgh, and many times after that in more exotic places. . ."

"We'll talk to the wife later, and see if we can find out," Gibbs said gruffly, cutting off Ducky's story. "In the meantime, Ducky needs to get the body back to autopsy and we need to head back to the office and find out everything we can about Lieutenant Erickson."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

There wasn't much to find out. Lieutenant Erickson was an upstanding officer. He'd gotten a degree in a military college in Wisconsin and transferred to Virginia upon graduation. He was married and had two children, aged seven and ten. Gibbs's face set grimly at this information.

Ducky's completed autopsy was eerily similar to that of the first victim, Alex Fisher. There were no markings or injuries or any kind of fibers on the body. There were only a few signs that the lieutenant had suffocated.

The one slight development from the second murder, was a small torn scrap of plastic Abby recovered from the lieutenant's truck. She had brandished it before the team excitedly. The small inch or so of plastic was a common type and, as McGee pointed out, could have come from virtually anything, like perhaps a ripped grocery bag.

Abby, not to be defeated, countered that a grocery bag could be a murder weapon in the right hands. And after showing them her find, she had holed herself up in her lab determined to run every test she could think of on the small scrap. She had known the killer had to have left something of his behind during the deed, and she fully intended to use it to find him.

By noon, Ziva and McGee had gone through the victim's phone records and found nothing, Gibbs had gone through six cups of coffee, and Tony had been slapped across the back of the head twice. The wife had been informed of her husband's death and had come into the office voluntarily to speak with them. Gibbs went with McGee to question her, but they found out very little other than the couple had apparently had a very happy marriage. Their suspicion of an affair seemed to be confirmed, however. Melanie Erickson, a tall, shapely black woman, was definitely not a redhead.

"What about the hit man theory, Boss?" Tony asked.

Gibbs shook his head. "There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the wife would want Lieutenant Erikson dead. She didn't suspect an affair." He didn't say anything about ruling the possibility out. They had too few leads to rule much of anything out.

"Did he have any, uh, 'friends' who were possibly upset with him?" McGee asked, thinking of Benjamin Emerson.

"Who knows. Have we interviewed his unit yet?" Tony said.

Ziva shot him an impatient glance. "We've been here all morning, Tony, of course we haven't interviewed his unit yet."

They were all silent for a moment as they realized what this meant. Gibbs glared at them. "What are you waiting for? DiNozzo! David! Go interview the unit!"

"On it, Boss!" Tony said quickly, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get to the elevator. Ziva followed closely behind, and the two were soon down in the parking lot squabbling over who got to drive the sedan.

By stealing the keys and threatening extremely painful injury to Tony, Ziva got to drive. Tony sulked the entire way there and most of the way back.

There was absolutely nothing suspicious coming from any of the lieutenant's unit members. The ones that were closest to him had emphatically insisted that he would never cheat on his wife, or do anything to hurt her. He seemed genuinely liked by everyone.

"He's too perfect!" Tony ranted from the passenger side of the car, "He had to have been hiding something. Nobody's like that!"

"I agree, there are no _men_ like that," Ziva teased.

"Very funny, Zee-vah. I suppose perfect women threaten to kill people with paper clips?" Tony said impatiently, "Swing by that Thai restaurant on the way back. I feel like I haven't eaten since the last ice age."

Ziva could hardly disagree, because her stomach growled very loudly at that precise moment. As they turned off the street and headed away from the base, they passed a cheap roadside motel. Tony twisted sharply in his seat to stare out the window.

"I don't believe it! There it is again!"

"What's there?" Ziva asked, squinting over Tony's shoulder. The car swerved dangerously toward the center of the road.

"Keep your eyes on the road, Ziva!" Tony yelled. A car in the other lane honked at them as it went past. Tony's knuckles gripped the door handle until they turned white, but he finally relaxed when the sedan straightened out. "Geez, are you trying to get me killed?"

Ziva shrugged. "It's on my list of things to do. Quite high up, actually – but I wouldn't risk my own life just to end yours." She smiled sweetly.

"Oh, how comforting," Tony drawled. His hand was still resting on the door handle, just in case he still needed to dive out of the car in an emergency. It worked in movies, after all.

"What was it that you saw, anyway?" Ziva asked.

"You mean you didn't see it?" Tony said incredulously, "The black car? Chevy Impala? Old '67 model? I swear, it's been following us."

"Why would a civilian car be following us?" Ziva wondered, glancing in the rear-view mirror, "The road behind us is empty, Tony. . ."

Tony shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Well, it wasn't _following_ us as in driving behind us bumper-to-bumper kind of thing. And it doesn't necessarily belong to a civilian. For all we know it could be the FBI. But I don't think they're allowed to have such good taste."

"What was it doing then?"

Tony seemed to hesitate. "It was parked in front of the motel."

Ziva glanced over at him, confused. "What motel?"

"Eyes on the road!" Tony snapped. He was practically shaking. "The motel we just drove past! Don't you pay attention to anything when you're driving?"

Ziva scowled. "How was it following us if no one was driving it?"

"This isn't the first time I've seen it," Tony insisted, "It was parked at the bar earlier, and I saw it driving away from the staff sergeant's house when we went to bring his wife in. And now I've seen it again, parked just outside base. Coincidence? I think not."

"Are you sure this is a real car, Tony?" Ziva said calmly, "Not an imaginary one you dreamed up in one of your little fantasies?" She smirked at him.

"Of course it's real – Ziva! The road!"

It was just in time too, as Ziva barely managed to slam on the brakes before they whizzed through an intersection filled with crossing schoolchildren. The rest of the way to the restaurant and back to NCIS headquarters consisted of Tony repeatedly grumbling:

"I am never letting you drive again."

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: Look, another '67 impala! Dang, there sure are a lot of those floating about.


	10. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer**: We've run out of witty ways to inform you that we don't own the characters from either show. . . sad though as it's only chapter 9.

* * *

"McGee, DiNozzo, David!" Gibbs yelled as he strode into the bullpen.

Tony's head shot up from where it had been resting on his desk. "M'awake Boss," he mumbled. At his own desk McGee sat up too quickly and nearly slipped off his chair. Across the aisle Ziva sat up from where she had been sleeping under her desk, her hair hanging messily around her face.

"Abby's got something," Gibbs informed his tired team. They had spent another night at the office, falling asleep around three, with no further developments on the two deaths.

Trying to brush off the remnants of sleep, the agents headed down to Abby's lab in hopes that she could provide them with anything to get the case back on track. Preferably before another marine was killed.

Abby greeted them far too enthusiastically for the early hour. "Morning!" she called out waving a Caff-Pow at them.

"Abby how can you drink that at this time of the morning?" McGee asked. It was, after all, not quite seven.

"Gibbs bought it for me," Abby replied happily, not actually answering McGee's question. "It's my second."

"Abbs," Gibbs started warningly.

"Oh. Right," she muttered pulling up the service record of a female marine. "Corporal Claire Henderson, I pulled her prints from Lieutenant Erikson's belt buckle."

"Strange place for a woman's prints to be don't you think Boss?" Tony asked innocently.

"Sounds like she could be the woman he was with at the bar," Ziva suggested.

"McGee, DiNozzo, you'll head back to the base to question Henderson. Abby, you have anything else?"

"Not much Gibbs," she replied, more subdued, "I've run all the prints from his car. All are a match to the Lieutenant or his family, and I can't find anything to connect the forensics between the two cases."

"Keep working on it, Abby," Gibbs told her before herding his team out of the lab. Tony and McGee headed to the parking lot, while Ziva and Gibbs headed back to the bullpen.

"I'm driving, Probie," Tony announced as they approached the dark sedan.

McGee just nodded, not bothering to argue with Tony, as he knew it would have the same end result. He didn't care so much which one of them drove anyway as Tony, unlike their other two co-workers, tended to obey the driving by-laws.

"It's too early," Tony complained as they made their way to the base, "You think Gibbs has even slept in the last few days?"

"He has to have," McGee replied. "Just, probably not a whole lot. And now with the second marine, I doubt he'll let us sleep a whole lot until we find something."

"Yeah," Tony agreed somberly, "Maybe—" But McGee never found out what Tony was going to say as the senior agent cut off abruptly as he pointed to a black car pulled over in an alley between two administrative buildings. "I don't believe it!" he yelled jerking the car to a sudden stop.

McGee lurched forward in his seat. "What the—?" he grumbled glaring at Tony.

Tony just pointed at the car again. "It's the impala, Probie. From the bar the other day, don't you remember?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah I guess," McGee muttered, clearly unsure of what Tony was babbling about.

"I knew it!" Tony gloated, jumping out of the car. "It just has to be involved, I'm sure of it now."

"Tony, what?" McGee called. Tony ignored him. "Tony we're supposed to be interviewing Henderson, remember? Tony?"

"Come on, McGee. We're going to get to the bottom of this once and for all."

"Tony," McGee sighed, getting out of the car to follow his partner. "What are you talking about?"

"This impala. It's been following us."

McGee gave Tony an incredulous look. "Following us?"

"Well, not really following," Tony replied, heading towards the building to the right of the alley. "But this is the fourth time I've seen it around places to do with the case."

"When else did you see it?" McGee questioned suspiciously.

"It was driving off base the other day when Gibbs and I came to talk to Mrs. Fisher. And Ziva and I saw it yesterday."

"Where?" McGee asked wearily, it did not look like Tony was going to abandon this quest of his any time soon.

"At some motel – that's not the point McGee," Tony explained, "The point is, whoever owns this car has something to do with our case. I'm sure of it."

McGee sighed again. "Tony, this is ridiculous. Gibbs told us to go question Corporal Henderson and that is what we are going to do."

"Sure," Tony agreed amiably, "Just as soon as we find out who owns that car."

"Tony!" McGee said, but his partner was already walking away and he hurried after him.

He caught up with Tony at the front desk of the administrative building. The young clerk at the front desk was talking to Tony, "I called the MP's about it when I got in just a little while ago," he was saying, "They told me that someone broke into archives." He gestured to the building on the other side of the alley. "Car probably belongs to them, though I dunno how they managed to get on base in the first place."

"Who breaks into a military base to go browse through archives?" McGee questioned.

"I don't know. Let's go find out," Tony said, heading for the door.

"Tony!" McGee called out after him. "What about Gibbs? You know, our boss? Our less-than-happy boss who is going to kill us both when he finds out we're chasing some car around when he sent us out to do an interview? Tony!"

But Tony was clearly ignoring him and was already halfway out the door. McGee sighed heavily and ran after him. He tried to talk some sense into Tony several more times as they made their way across the base to the brig, but Tony was adamant that the impala owner-slash-records thief was connected to their case.

The MP on duty gave them a strange look when Tony requested to see the thief. "We were just going to turn them over to Virgina PD," the guy replied, "They're not military and they didn't actually take anything."

"_They're _not military?" Tony asked, attempting to clarify the number of suspects, for he had assumed there was only one thief.

"Nope, well, not so much as we can tell. They both seemed to be using fake ID's."

"They didn't take anything?" McGee repeated finding this the stranger piece of news.

"No, actually we kind of caught them reading some old file. Bizarrest break in I've ever seen," the guard commented. "What do you want with them?"

"We believe they are involved in the case we're working on," Tony replied smoothly.

"Well, they're just back there," The guard said gesturing down a hall that lead to several holding cells. "I guess you guys can talk to them."

Tony nodded and started down the hall when McGee asked, "What was the file about?"

"Huh?"

"The file, the one they were reading?"

"Oh, uh, some old marine records. A married couple that died years ago – murder suicide out where that new bar just went up."

Tony gave McGee a triumphant look and lead the way down the hall.

The two suspects were in a cell at the end of the block. They appeared to be deep in an argument and did not notice the arrival of the two NCIS agents. One, a tall man with longish light brown hair, was seated on the floor on one side of the cell. He was leaning against the wall facing the cot where the other man was lying.

The second man was shorter. He was lying on his back, his hands under his head. His short hair was darker than the first's, and he looked a few years older but was still clearly in his twenties.

Tony grabbed McGee and they both stopped a short distance away from the cell, McGee looked at Tony questioningly, but the senior agent was watching the two men before them.

"I knew this was a bad idea," the taller one complained, "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"Hey, this is so not my fault," the second thief said, not moving from his rather relaxed looking position. "It was your clumsiness that got us caught."

"It was your dumb idea to break into a military base," the first man countered. "And dude, did you really have to switch the flashlight off so suddenly?"

"You should be used to working in the dark by now. Besides, how was I supposed to know they would have so many guards wandering around? I mean, who the hell is stupid enough to break into a building full of files?"

The tall man gave his partner an incredulous look. "Gee, Dean, I don't know."

"I meant besides us, wise-ass," Dean replied. "I don't exactly remember you coming up with any brilliant plans back there, college boy."

'College Boy', or 'Wise-Ass', fumed. "You gave me one day, Dean! Not even."

Dean shrugged carelessly. "One day's plenty."

"Not to mention, you didn't even help me," College Boy went on indignantly, "You were blasting Boston the entire time I was trying to research the case, and then you nearly got us thrown out of the library—"

"It's not my fault – I was hungry!"

Tony and McGee exchanged looks. McGee opened his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of how this wasn't getting them anywhere and they should leave, but Tony quickly shushed him. College Boy and Dean continued arguing oblivious to their presence. College Boy seemed to be in full-blown rant mode.

"And then you flirted with some girl the entire time we were at the bar."

"Hey, she knew the dead guy! I was questioning her."

Tony glanced over at McGee smugly. It didn't mean anything, McGee wanted to say. Just because they were talking about 'some dead guy' didn't mean it was _their_ dead guy. Did it? Maybe they were CSI wannabes or something. Crazier things had happened.

"If you'd given me a little more time we wouldn't be in this mess," College Boy sulked.

Dean hardly looked like he believed him. "Don't start with the 'what-if' whining and bitching. We got what we need now."

"Yeah, a lot of good it does us. In case you haven't noticed, we're locked up."

"I kind of did notice, Sammy," Dean answered, completely unfazed. "Now shut up so I can get some shut-eye." He closed his eyes as if he was going to take a nap and turned deliberately away from his companion.

"Jerk," College Boy, or 'Sammy', muttered.

Dean didn't bat an eyelash. "Bitch."

Tony finally cleared his throat, and stepped toward the cell. Sammy, or 'Bitch', flinched and craned his neck around to see Tony and McGee. He at least had the decency to seem a little bit anxious. Dean only cracked an eye open and grinned.

"Finally. Man, we've been sitting here for hours."

"Well, we've been here for ten minutes," Tony replied easily with a grin of his own. This fact that they'd been overheard didn't seem to bother the two thieves, so Tony continued, shifting instantly to a more business-like tone. "I'm Special Agent DiNozzo and this is Special Agent McGee."

"Agents," Dean repeated, and Tony was immensely satisfied to see the grin finally start to fade from his face. "Would that be like, uh. . ."

"NCIS," Tony announced, flashing his badge. McGee was still hovering by the corner, contemplating all the ways Gibbs could kill them if he found out what they were doing.

"N-C-what?" Dean asked blankly.

"Navy cops!" Sammy hissed.

"They can't be that important," Dean muttered.

"Hey! We are very important!" Tony cried self-righteously. "In fact, we're important enough to take you into custody, so you better get moving."

"We can't take them into custody!" McGee protested before he could stop himself. Tony glared at him – solidarity in front of the suspects and all that. But then, these guys weren't really suspects, were they?

Dean nodded. "I agree. Listen to him." Of course he was completely ignored.

"Of course we can," Tony said, still glaring, "We have them on breaking and entering into a military base, snooping around classified personnel records, and interfering with our case."

"What case?" Dean asked innocently.

Sammy groaned and let his head fall into his hands.

"Come on, get up!" Tony ordered. He was imitating Gibbs now, shouting back to the MPs to help transport NCIS's newest suspects back to headquarters.

McGee groaned to himself. If he died in some freak catastrophe sometime between now and when they next faced Gibbs, he would be a lucky, lucky man. At least that death would probably be painless.

~tbc~

* * *

**A/N**: Tada!


	11. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer**: We don't own either show. In fact, we don't own any shows.

* * *

They pulled up outside Corporal Henderson's apartment about forty minutes later. Tony had instructed that the record-thieves and their damned impala be shunted off to an NCIS holding cell and the garage, respectively. In the meantime, he had dragged an increasingly neurotic McGee across base to finish the job they should have started nearly two hours ago.

"Will you stop chewing your nails, Probie? It's unprofessional."

"I'm not chewing my nails!" McGee snapped, pulling his hand away from his face guiltily. "You do realize Gibbs is going to kill us, right?"

"I'm just pursuing a lead," Tony replied coolly. "As senior agent I have the right to make executive decisions, you know."

McGee stared at him like he'd gone insane. "No you don't." He realized he had his fingers halfway up to his mouth again, and dropped his hand to his side. Imagining Gibbs' expression when he figured out what Tony had done was not helping McGee calm down.

Claire Henderson was a redhead, which fit the description of the woman Lieutenant Erickson had been at the bar with. She was a very pretty young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, and very surprised to see them.

"You mean. . . that guy they found at the bar yesterday. . . that was Jason?" she asked in a quavering voice. Clearly, whatever her relation to him, it hadn't been close enough for her to be informed of his death right away.

Tony had his serious face on. "Yes, we're sorry to have to tell you. How well did you know him?"

Corporal Henderson looked away guiltily. It did not take them long to get her to crack and admit to the affair, but she did not seem to have had much of a reason to kill the lieutenant. By the time they left her apartment they had no more information than when they had entered, and McGee was sure that Gibbs was going to flay them alive or something equally gruesome. And he'd get away with it too.

They had just climbed back into the car when McGee's cell phone rang. He picked it up quickly and muttered, "Hello?"

"McGee," Gibbs' voice said icily. Even over the phone, McGee was sure he felt himself freezing from the sound. He opened and shut his mouth a few times, but couldn't make any words come out.

It hardly mattered, Gibbs had not called to listen to him. "You and DiNozzo had better have a hell of a good reason for why two petty thefts are locked up in my holding cell, and why that damn car got towed to Abby's garage." His voice was rising with each syllable.

"Uh, yes, well, the thing is. . ." McGee stammered lamely. In a sudden flash of saving-his-own-hide, he held the phone out to Tony, "It's for you."

"Hi, Boss!" Tony said cheerfully. He then had to hold the phone away from his ear, wincing, as Gibbs shouted at him through the other end. "Yeah, I'm great, Boss. Thanks for asking."

Somehow, McGee thought this was not what Gibbs had asked.

"I swear they're connected to the case, Boss," Tony kept saying. McGee sighed, and tried not to listen to the tinny sound of Gibbs shouting over the phone. It was going to be a long day.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

The holding cells at NCIS headquarters were, ironically, much smaller than the ones back at the military base. There was no cot, only a bench along the far side of the wall. Dean and Sam Winchester had long ago given up trying to share it – or really, Sam had given up. Dean was too stubborn and Sam was too tall.

Dean was too tall to be lying on it either, but he did it anyway, letting his legs bend at the knees and rest flat on the floor. He propped his hands behind his head in the very same way he had done before, with that same stupid devil-may-care grin plastered all over his face. It was slowly driving Sam insane.

"You cannot be okay with this," Sam said finally.

"You're right," Dean said, and for a moment Sam deluded himself into thinking his brother was going to answer seriously. It was a very brief moment. "They didn't even give us a room with a view."

"Dean, this is bad," Sam said, gesturing widely around the cell, as if Dean hadn't noticed. Okay, so bad was a very lame understatement of their situation. Sam was tired, hungry, uncomfortable, and for the most part very, very cranky. He frankly did not give a damn if his vocabulary had gone to hell for the moment.

Dean nodded, "Yeah, no TV, no radio. . . It blows."

Sam exploded. "We are in jail! Aren't you the slightest bit concerned about how we're going to get out?"

"Well, I figure, if it's anything like monopoly then we just have to roll doubles in three turns."

Sam was torn between the overwhelming urge to punch his brother in the face, and the sudden impulse to give up and start crying. Of course, the latter would never, ever happen, and definitely not in front of Dean. The former was looking pretty good at the moment.

"How long is three turns?" he demanded, "Eight months? You really want to spend the rest of the time you got left here?"

"We're not going to be here for eight months, Sammy," Dean said in a somewhat subdued tone.

They sat there in semi-awkward silence for the next few minutes. Sam wished he hadn't brought the subject up, because now it was all he could think about. Of course they weren't going to stay here for eight months, he told himself. He was going to find a way out of here just like he was going to find a way to save Dean from that stupid deal he made with the Crossroads Demon, and he could not do any of that while he was locked up here. Was he talking himself into circles now? Did it matter?

Dean's voice jarred him from his thoughts. "So, you think it's the husband or the wife?"

"What?" Sam said, taking a moment to remember. Right, they had a case to solve, too. On the whole, it was a much safer subject than the one they had just almost talked about.

"Murder-suicide," Dean reminded him unnecessarily. "I'm thinking it's the wife's ghost. She's the one who killed them both, and the victims are all men. Either way, I say we burn them both."

"Yeah," Sam said vaguely, trying to remember what they had read in the file and what they already knew from their research. "The husband was having an affair overseas wasn't he?"

"You think the ghost is after men having affairs?"

Sam considered. He'd had a train of thought earlier, just before they got busted going through the records. "Well, we don't know that the two guys who died were having affairs, but they were both married. . . and you know, the report said that Nancy Whitman was found wearing navy whites."

Dean gave him one of those 'so what?' looks. "Does it matter what she was wearing when she died, Sam?"

"It does if she's a woman in white," Sam said after a bit of hesitation. The idea had seemed better in his head, when it was dark, and he was scanning over the files with a flashlight. Having thought it over in the brighter, cramped cell, he was sure Dean was going to make fun of him.

"The Whitmans didn't have kids," Dean replied.

Sam breathed in. "The report said Nancy was pregnant." There, he said it.

Dean stared at him. Sam stared back, feeling oddly like a word was being tattooed onto his forehead. It was not a very polite word.

"Sam, that doesn't count," Dean told him finally, sitting up, arms crossed.

"We don't know," Sam said defensively, "It might."

Dean shook his head, held up a hand and said warningly, "We are _not_ having this conversation."

But it was too late.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

By the time Tony and McGee made it back to headquarters McGee had worked himself up to the point where he almost wished the world would just open up and swallow him. Anything was better than facing a very, very angry Gibbs.

The two agents stepped into the elevator and McGee reluctantly hit the button for the bullpen. Tony tapped the button for the garage. "Just going to pop in and see Abby," he explained to McGee's disbelieving look.

"Uh Tony," McGee tried, "Gibbs told us to start working on _our_ case. You remember the one, two dead marines? We've been working on it for just over a week straight?"

"Exactly Probie," Tony replied calmly. "We've been working on it for a week straight with how many developments? These two are connected. I just have to prove it."

"Um. . . how about you prove it later?" McGee suggested meekly.

"I'll just stop in the garage for a sec, then we can go up," Tony promised. "Or if you'd rather, you could head up first, and I'll catch up."

McGee just stared at Tony. Surely he was just bluffing? There was no way Tony would want Gibbs to know that he was ignoring his order and still working on this 'lead'. On the other hand, there was absolutely no way McGee was going up alone to face Gibbs first.

The doors slid open at the garage to reveal the black impala that had started all this trouble. McGee glared at the car. Abby waved at them from where she stood at the side of the car.

"Hey Abbs," Tony greeted. "Find anything?"

"Well, technically, I'm not here," came Abby's reply. "Gibbs said that the car is not a priority, but I'm on a break and I mean, it's a '67 impala. I had to come take a look."

Tony grinned at her. "It sure is a nice car isn't it?"

"Oh yeah," Abby replied holding out a box to Tony. "So I've scanned the inside, found this in the glovie. Little suspicious."

Tony took the box and glanced at its contents. The pictures on the ID tags were clearly the two thieves, but the names and credentials varied extensively. "Quite a collection," Tony muttered.

"Yeah, I haven't had a chance to look through anything else, but I'd have to say these two are into more than just petty theft," Abby commented.

"Alright, I'll pop down to your lab later, probably a lot later," Tony added knowing Gibbs would send him off on some new, most likely unpleasant task as he was very much in the dog house until this hunch payed off. Assuming of course, it did pay off.

Tony and McGee had just made it back to the elevator when Abby called out, "Guys? You might want to see this."

"What is it?" Tony asked making his way back to the car. Abby had just popped the trunk and was staring down into it.

"Well, let's just say I'm definitely sure about the more-than-petty-theft thing now."

Tony made his way around the car and let out a low whistle. The trunk of the car was an arsenal. Literally. There were several sawed-off shot guns, a collection of hand guns, boxes of ammunition, and various other rather peculiar items.

"Is that a stake?" McGee asked staring at the odd collection in wonder.

"I do believe so," Tony replied with a shake of his head. "Well this is definitely interesting. Abby keep working on it, when you have time, you know between running all the heaps of forensics we recovered for you from the 'actual' case."

Abby smiled. "Sure Tony. I'll call if anything comes up."

"Oh and Abbs?" Tony asked, "Maybe you should get their prints and run them. I have a feeling they might not be so forthcoming with their IDs." He gestured to the box of fake id cards he still held.

"You got it," Abby replied as the two agents headed once again for the elevator.

"So McGee, willing to admit my suspects have merit now?" Tony asked as the elevator doors slid open.

"There is still no connection to our case, and it really doesn't matter what I think anyway," McGee replied testily. "Gibbs is still going to kill us."

"Aw, come on McGee, the boss loves it when I play my hunches."

"Are we even talking about the same man? You know, Gibbs? The rather frightening ex-marine who knocks your brains around frequently?" McGee paused for a moment, "How hard did he hit you last time?"

Tony just shot a glare at McGee as they arrived at the bullpen. "Not hard enough." Gibbs' voice rang out as they arrived.

"Hey, Boss," Tony greeting flopping down in his chair. "Henderson was sleeping with the second vic., but she didn't even know he was dead 'til we got there. She has an alibi, taxi picked her up from the bar before TOD, I called the company and a driver gave a matching description. I'll fax a photo over to make sure."

McGee stared at Tony from where he had retreated behind his own desk. He had not even noticed Tony make that call. Gibbs just grunted in acknowledgment.

"David, you keep working on a connection between the vics. And look through the tox report Abby just sent up," Gibbs order gesturing to a folder at the edge of his desk. "McGee, you're with me. We're going back to the bar." Gibbs and McGee had grabbed their gear and made it just past Ziva's desk when Gibbs added, "DiNozzo, make sure you send that fax before you wander off to holding."

Tony smirked at the confused and stunned look on McGee's face before the junior agent hurried off to catch up with their boss. After printing off the file photo of Corporal Henderson, Tony fed it through the fax machine. He absently scanned through the box of fake IDs from Abby while he waiting for the fax to go through.

After a moment he dropped the IDs on his desk dramatically causing Ziva to look up. "Can you believe this?" he demanded gesturing to the pile.

Ziva sighed but got up to look anyway. "They certainly have a lot of IDs," she commented unsure to what had Tony so upset.

"Yeah a lot," Tony grumbled. "And yet they somehow managed to miss an entire federal agency."

Ziva raised an eyebrow at him and glanced back at the pile. "You are upset that they _haven't _forged NCIS badges?"

"Well yeah," Tony replied shifting through the cards once more. "FBI, federal marshals, hell they even have homeland security!"

Ziva just shook her head and returned to her desk, "Is it not a good thing they have not attempted to impersonate NCIS agents?"

"It's insulting, Ziva. I mean no one outside of the navy and marine corps even knows we exist! How can you be okay with that?"

"Well," Ziva said flashing Tony a smile, "For one thing, I am not NCIS. I am Mossad."

Tony shoved the IDs aside, grumbling, "This is humiliating."

~tbc~


	12. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: **See previous ten chapters.

* * *

"Fetus, Sammy. It was a fetus," Dean's voice rose exasperatedly.

"It still would have been a baby, if she hadn't killed it," Sammy argued back. Tony stopped short and leaned against the wall a few feet down the hall. He had come down to holding with the intention of taking one of the suspects for questioning, but how could he not stop and listen to the strange argument? After all, the two men were in federal custody, while their car was full of forged IDs and illegal weapons, and they were having a pro-life pro-choice debate?

"You know what? That's not even the point. For all we know she had no idea she was pregnant. Besides she killed her husband. Women in white don't do that."

"Fine," Sammy sighed. "I suppose, since you know everything, you know which one it is?"

Dean shrugged. "Like I said, not for sure. That's why I say we go for both. They're in the same place anyway," he reasoned.

"Right, that just brings us back to the original point of what now?"

Tony would have liked to listen to Dean's response, but his cell vibrated at his side and he backtracked down the hall to answer it. "DiNozzo."

"Tony," Abby called in her usual cheery voice. "I ran the prints I collected from the impala. I think you might want to come see this."

"That good?" Tony asked.

"Well it's definitely something. Not sure if it's good though," she replied vaguely.

"Be right there," Tony said clicking his phone closed and heading off towards Abby's lab.

When he arrived, Abby was standing at her computer. Two mug shots were displayed on the plasma screen, easily recognizable as the two young men in holding. "That's them," Tony confirmed as he joined Abby.

Abby nudged him playfully. "Tony! You never told me they were so cute."

"_Cute_?" Tony repeated in disbelief, "They're criminals Abbs. Very. . . bad, criminals," he noted as he read the files. He whistled. "That's quite a rapsheet."

"But they're so adorable," Abby gushed, "Look at those faces. . . Do those look like the faces of bad guys to you?"

"According to their records, yes," Tony said unsympathetically, "Besides, Abbs, judging on appearances? That's not very scientific of you."

"It's not my scientific opinion," Abby replied lightly. She patted Tony's shoulder. "There's no need to get jealous, Tony – I think you're very cute, too."

Tony grinned widely. "Well, of course I am – in a very rugged, handsome, manly way, right?"

Abby grinned back, but didn't answer.

"Right?" Tony prompted again. "That is what you meant."

"I'm going back to check out the rest of the stuff in that impala," Abby told him with a cheeky smile.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

When Gibbs and McGee got back from the bar, Fornell was sitting at Gibbs's desk.

"You'd better have a good reason for being here," Gibbs told him.

Fornell looked up at Gibbs seriously, or as seriously as a man might look while sitting at another man's desk playing with his pens and post-it notes. McGee stood a few feet back from the both of them, lest he be caught in the crossfire.

"I believe I've solved your FBI problem," Fornell replied. Gibbs said nothing, and only glared at him. If glares could be translated into words, however, it might have meant something like: "Then get on with it and tell me already."

It took McGee a few moments to remember what the 'FBI problem' was, other than the fact that an FBI agent was currently in their office sitting at his boss's desk. That in itself seemed like a pretty big problem, but then he remembered Mrs. Fisher had claimed the FBI had supposedly talked to her, and that was a bit of a problem, too.

"It wasn't the FBI," Fornell said finally.

"Who was it then?" Gibbs demanded. "Don't tell me you showed up and messed up my desk just to make excuses." He snatched one of his pens out of Fornell's hand as he said this. McGee pretended not to see by concentrating very hard on the cup of coffee he had managed to snag on the way back to the office.

"As a matter of fact," Fornell said, standing up with a very sour look on his face, "I have another reason for being here - but one that is closely related, I promise."

Gibbs gave him a look as if to say he didn't care much about Fornell's promises, but Fornell went on unperturbed. "A couple of hours ago NCIS ran some prints through the database which flagged our interest. They match a couple of fugitives we've been after for over a year. I read their file, briefly, nasty stuff: satanic rituals, corpse desecration, several gruesome murders. . ."

McGee's eyes widened. These weren't the guys Tony had picked up with that impala earlier, were they?

"They also have a tendency of impersonating federal agents from time to time," Fornell added, "It's likely that the 'FBI agents' that your witness talked to weren't really agents at all."

Gibbs raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You mean they've been going around playing dress-up as your people and you haven't been able to catch them all this time?"

Fornell sighed and ignored the jab at the FBI's competency, or lack thereof. "Look, Jethro, the FBI's been after these two for a long time. The agent assigned to the case, Henricksen, has been practically breathing down my neck ever since he got wind that you guys had them in custody."

"Which would have been what, half an hour?" Gibbs asked dryly.

"Ten minutes," Fornell said with a shrug. "Point is we want them. Hand them over."

"No can do," Gibbs replied, setting his own cup of coffee down on the desk.

Fornell look exasperated, though not surprised. "Why not? I already explained that _we_ didn't interfere with your case. Aren't you above petty revenge?"

"You're not worth taking revenge on, Tobias," Gibbs clarified briskly, "I'm not handing them over because they are suspects in our case."

At this point, McGee choked on the coffee he had been drinking and sent it spraying all over the floor. Both Gibbs and Fornell turned to stare at him and McGee tried his very best to blend into the background, while simultaneously attempting to quell his coughing fit.

"Suspects," Fornell finally repeated.

"Yes," Gibbs remained firm. "In the deaths of two marines. Which, last I checked, is NCIS's jurisdiction. And since my team already has them in custody, we get priority. I'll let you know just as soon as we're done."

Fornell glared at Gibbs for a long moment. "Fine. But don't be surprised if my boss calls your boss," he relented, knowing Gibbs well enough to know that sitting here arguing was not going to get him anywhere. If that Henricksen wanted them so bad he could come get them himself. Gibbs would just love that.

On his way out Fornell paused and turned back to face Gibbs. "Watch them close Jethro, these boys don't look it, but they have an unnatural talent for escaping custody."

"Duly noted," Gibbs replied reclaiming his desk.

As soon as Fornell was gone McGee turned to his boss. "Suspects?" he asked meekly.

Gibbs gave him a hard look, but did not explain his change of opinion. Instead he picked up his phone and dialed. After a very brief conversation with DiNozzo, he got up and headed for the elevator, gesturing for McGee and Ziva to follow.

Ziva gave up on her fruitless search she had been quietly working on during Gibbs and Fornell's confrontation. She was no further than she had been before McGee and Gibbs had left and she was getting frustrated. McGee hurried after them carefully avoiding the mess he had made on the bullpen floor.

"Boss?" McGee questioned as they waiting for the lift.

"Abby and DiNozzo are down in evidence," Gibbs replied is his usual non-explanatory way.

McGee looked at Ziva who just shrugged. They arrived in the evidence garage to find it mostly as McGee had seen it last. The impala was still parked in the centre of the room. Now however the contents of the trunk were spread across the floor a few feet away. Abby was sitting cross legged staring at a large worn book, an excited look on her face. Tony crouched next to her holding a large bag of salt and looking confused.

"Okay, okay, Abbs. Serious demonic mumbo-jumbo. I get it," Tony was saying while still staring at the salt bag. "What I want to know is what's with the salt?"

"Ghosts, Tony," Abby replied as though it was the most obvious concept in the world.

"Ghosts?" Ziva asked as Tony and Abby looked up at the three agents' arrival. "What does a large quantity of rock salt have to do with ghosts?"

Abby sighed. "Don't you guys know anything?" she said, shaking her head. "Salt is supposed to repel ghosts."

"Abby, ghosts aren't real," McGee interjected, in some vain attempt to bring logic back into the conversation.

"Says you," Abby replied huffily. She then turned to Gibbs, "Everything in their trunk is right out of urban legends and ghost stories, Gibbs. Silver bullets, Latin exorcisms, stakes, salt. If there is a story about a supernatural being, then they have what you need to kill it. And this," she continued, pausing to hold up the old book she had, "seems to be some kind of monster encyclopedia. Has information on all sorts of paranormal tales and folk lore. It's amazing."

"It's insane," McGee corrected. Abby shot him a dirty look.

"What about our case Abby," Gibbs asked, "Is there any evidence at all that they are connected to our dead marines?"

"I've just started Gibbs," Abby replied turning back to the collection. "Nothing jumps out as something that can be used to suffocate someone. I'll have to document all the items here anyway, who knows how many cases they could be connected to."

"Our case first," Gibbs instructed before turning to Tony. "Okay, DiNozzo, exactly when and where did you see this car?"

"Uh, well, McGee and I saw it just across the street from the crime scene. That would have been a few days ago, before we knew the wife had poisoned Fisher. Second time was with you boss. Right on base. And the last time Ziva and I were driving by some old road side motel, I told Ziva and she nearly killed us when sh—"

"What motel?" Gibbs interrupted.

"Some flea-bitten place just out off 6th street." Tony replied.

"McGee you go with DiNozzo, check the place out, find out if they had a room."

"On it, Boss," Tony said grabbing McGee and heading for the elevator. "Well, Probie, what do you know," Tony gloated as they stepped into the elevator. "I guess that little detour we took paid off after all now, didn't it?"

McGee just stared at him, speechless.

~tbc~


	13. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer**: We don't own either show. In fact, we don't own any shows.

* * *

"Well, I guess that answers any questions left about my claim regarding their involvement," Tony muttered. Beside him McGee stared at the table silently. They were standing inside the motel room of the Winchester brothers and from the newspaper clippings scattered around the small table it was clear that the two men had, in fact, been following them. Just like Tony had suggested.

The pile contained several clippings from both Fisher's and Erickson's cases, including both men's obituaries. Several other documents were also on the table. One appeared to be a list of graveyards. There was also a laptop computer.

"Still doesn't prove they killed them," McGee finally managed.

"I never said they did," Tony replied. "I said they were involved. Although judging by the list of prior crimes the FBI wants them for, I'd say it's a safe bet."

"Why all the clippings then?"

"Because they are psycho killers? Maybe they get off following the case in the news, who knows," Tony said with a shrug as he started bagging the pages. "Get that computer, you can go through it when we get back to the office."

"Sure," McGee muttered donning a pair of gloves to collect the computer. "Still why do you think they would suffocate two marines when they have a trunk full of shot guns?" McGee wondered aloud.

"Because they are psycho killers?" Tony repeated helpfully.

McGee shook his head and continued to bag the stuff they had found. There had to be a better explanation to all this. The one solid lead they had found for the case so far could _not_ have come from Tony chasing around some old car. . . could it?

Tony went off to see if the motel manager knew anything about his guests – which seemed unlikely given the state of the place. McGee imagined that the manager turned a blind eye to several shady customers.

When Tony came back he was frowning. "Manager says that they didn't check in until Tuesday. Of course, he was a little confused at first – apparently our boys were using the names Bo Darville and Cledus Snow." He made a face. "His son was the one who dealt with them. I can't believe neither of them noticed. Someone really needs to educate these people on classic American films."

McGee stared at him blankly.

"Smokey and the Bandit?" Tony asked disbelievingly. "Featuring a sweet car chase and '77 Pontiac Trans Am? C'mon, Probie, even _you_ have to have seen that movie."

"Well, I haven't," McGee replied, "And I don't really think that matters right now, Tony. If the Winchesters didn't arrive until Tuesday that means they couldn't have killed Alex Fisher – he died Saturday night."

"It just means they didn't check in at this motel until Tuesday," Tony said with a shrug, "There's absolutely nothing to say they haven't been here all week."

"There's also nothing to say that they have," McGee pointed out. It was a bit of a weak excuse, and he knew it.

Tony smirked. "You just can't admit that I'm right, can you Probie?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Nearly a week earlier Sam Winchester had been sitting in a small diner in some backward town in the southern part of Virginia, trying not to fall asleep at the table. Dean was off flirting with some blonde waitress, and Sam did not expect him to wander back for a while.

Their last hunt had been fairly uncomplicated, but tiring. Some stir-crazy farmer had discovered a book on black magic rituals and had used it to raise an army of zombies in his barn. Seriously, what was wrong with some people? 'I'm lonely, I think I'll make an undead army to keep me company.' Whatever happened to getting a dog?

They'd been up all night clearing out the zombies. Sam still was not sure the farmer had learned his lesson, but Dean had threatened him with severe bodily harm involving painful removal of vital organs with a spoon if he ever tried anything like it again. The man had seemed pretty convinced by that.

Sam's head nodded forward toward the table. He tried to keep awake. He could see Dean still chatting up the blonde at the counter, and the diner was getting busier. He propped open his laptop and tried to remember why he had brought it – he did not want to leave it in the car, right – and what he was searching for. He never did finish that last thought.

He was chasing a zombie that was driving away in the impala and thinking how much Dean was going to kill him, when he realized the remaining zombies were singing _Hallelujah _in Leonard Cohen's voice. He couldn't find Dean at all, but his brother's voice kept calling him and – oh God, was Dean a zombie? No. No, no, no!

"No. . ."

"Hey, earth to Sammy! I've found our next case." Dean said sharply, jolting Sam awake and into sitting position. His brother's fingers snapped in front of his face.

Sam looked around vaguely for the blonde girl, but she was gone. In fact, the entire set-up of the diner had changed. It was no where near as busy as it had been before. The song, _Hallelujah_, was fading in the background and then another, far more upbeat, song that Sam did not recognize started.

"Clowns again?" Dean asked lightly.

"What?" Sam said dazedly.

"Dude, you were having a nightmare," Dean informed him, but seeing that Sam did not want to talk about it he was happy to skirt around the subject. "I've found our next case," he repeated, dropping a newspaper on the table in front of Sam and jabbing a finger at the page.

It was an obituary, of course. It was always an obituary. A marine had died at bar up in DC. The circumstances were mysterious at best. The body had been found in a car and the cause of death was unknown. The wasn't really any more information than that.

"How is this one of our cases?" Sam asked wearily. He did not like the sound of Washington. There were important things there, like the White House and FBI headquarters. When you were a fugitive you tended to avoid those things, especially the FBI headquarters.

"They can't figure out what killed him," Dean said, matter-of-fact, as if this proved everything, "Mysterious circumstances and all that – how is it not one of our cases?"

Sam shook his head, too tired to form a more coherent argument. He stared down at the newspaper in front of him and briefly registered that it was the _only_ thing in front of him. "Dude, where's my laptop?" he said, trying not to sound too frantic.

"Relax, Sammy, I got it. Figured you'd have a fit if I let you drool all over the keys." Dean grinned, lifting the laptop into view from the seat beside him and plunking it back down unceremoniously. Sam opened his mouth to say something along the lines of: "Be careful with that" but Dean cut him off.

"Anyway, I used it to research our new case. The bar the marine died at? Closed down a couple years back because another couple died. It only just opened again, the same night the latest victim died. Still think it doesn't sound like one of our cases?"

Really, it probably did not matter what Sam thought. Dean was already wearing that cocky smirk he had whenever he'd completely made up his mind. Sam sighed.

"Dude, quit making that face," Dean said, looking annoyed.

"What face?" Sam asked innocently.

"You know!" Dean ground out irritably. He muttered something that sounded like, "I swear. . . worse than a freaking dog. . ."

Sam tried not to smile. "I don't know, Dean. DC. . ." He tried his best to articulate what he thought was wrong with all this, but all he could come up with was a feeble, "The FBI are there."

"The FBI are everywhere," Dean told him dismissively, "And they're not going to be looking for us on their home turf. That's the last place they'd expect us to show up."

Sam sighed, and made an effort to gather himself together and head to the car.

Dean knew he had won, and was grinning from ear to ear again. "Besides, we have a job to do and there is no way the goddamn FBI is keeping us from doing our job."

"That's still assuming it _is_ one of our jobs," Sam replied tiredly.

"It's one of our jobs," Dean insisted stubbornly, "It can't hurt to check it out. What's the worst that could happen?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"What's the _worst_ that could happen?" Sam muttered to himself. He was facing the bars and trying to get a good look down the hallway. It wasn't easy. He was sitting in an NCIS holding cell, he was about as tired as he had been a week earlier, and Dean was just as annoying. Really, not much had changed, other than the fact that they had been arrested by a federal agency.

"We're screwed," he said, slightly louder in case Dean had not heard him.

He heard Dean shifting around on the bench behind him. "Quit your bitching. You sound like one of those whiny Elmo kids."

"_Emo_ kids!" Sam snapped.

"Whatever. You probably are one, man. You got the hair."

"I do not have emo hair," Sam grumbled. Only Dean could turn a serious conversation about how much trouble they were in into a jab at Sam's hair.

In fact, he was not even content to let it drop at Sam's hair. "Please don't tell me you listened to that crappy whiny music in college, too."

"It's not that bad," Sam muttered.

"You did, didn't you?" Dean said, sitting up. His voice was half accusing and half horrified.

Sam didn't get a chance to defend himself. At that moment the door at the end of the hall swung open and two younger agents that they had not seen before walked purposefully toward them.

Dean grinned at the woman. "Dean Winchester?" she asked. Dean's grin faltered. Sam felt like his stomach and his chest had inverted themselves. Not only were they stuck in a cell, but now the feds knew who they were.

"Don't know who you're talking about about," Dean said unconvincingly.

"You're to come with us," her partner said. He looked like he was trying to sound tough, but he was eyeing the two of them uneasily. Sam wondered exactly what their record said. They'd probably racked up quite a body count as far as the FBI was concerned.

Dean shrugged and got up. Sam moved toward the door, too, and the agent on the other side of the bars nearly flinched. "You're not coming!" he said quickly, with a wild 'Don't move or I'll shoot' look.

"Where are you taking him?" Sam demanded.

"Some place with air conditioning, I hope," Dean said, tugging uncomfortably on his collar.

The two agents ignored him. "Special Agent Gibbs has some questions for you,"the woman said, "It would be in your best interests to cooperate." She did not seem as intimidated by them as her partner, or maybe she was just a better actor.

"Sorry, they forgot to teach me that word in kindergarten," Dean told her cheerfully. He shot a meaningful look at Sam as he made his way over to the door. _Stay put_._ Don't worry about me_.

Well, duh, Sam was going to stay put. Where else was he going to go? He was just going to be left sitting in this stuffy holding cell, by himself, while federal agents interrogated his brother. Why would he worry?

What he really needed was to think of a way to get out of here.

He could still hear Dean's voice carry down the hall as the NCIS agents led him away.

"So, this Agent Gibbles. . . what's he like? Sounds like something you'd name a cat. . ."

"Agent _Gibbs_," the woman corrected sharply, "You had better not say anything like that to his face."

"Why not? I like it."

Sam sighed and dropped down by the bench, resting his head in his hands. They were so screwed.

~tbc~


	14. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer**: . . . You know we don't own them.

* * *

Tony smirked as McGee slipped into the observation room. "Finally willing to admit they're suspects, Probie?" he asked.

"They still don't look like the kind that can take on fully trained marines," McGee commented joining Ziva and Tony in front of the glass.

"Appearances can be deceiving," Ziva said her attention focused on the young man sitting at the table in the other room. Dean had been left in the room about ten minutes before and was still maintaining a relaxed look. However, Ziva now detected a hidden tension in his expression and posture.

Tony looked about to comment, when the doors to the interrogation room opened and Gibbs strode in, a thick file in his hand. He dropped the file loudly in front of Dean, who just stared evenly back at Gibbs.

"I'd guess that was empty, but I've come to realize feds don't have hobbies," Dean said when Gibbs did not begin.

Gibbs sat down across from Dean and pulled the file closer to himself. Still he did not start. Dean glanced towards the two-way, then back at Gibbs. "Boy you guys sure are touchy about your old records," he muttered under his breath.

Opening the file Gibbs spread a few newspaper clippings, sealed in plastic, across the table. Dean glanced at them but did not comment. It was clear he knew what they said.

"These were collected from your motel. Along with your laptop, which one of my agents is going through now," Gibbs said.

In the observation room Ziva and Tony turned to look at McGee. "I uh, yeah, I was—" he stammered before bolting for the door.

On the other side of the glass Dean clarified, "Sammy's laptop."

Gibbs continued as though Dean had not spoken. "The FBI's already expressed their interest in you and your brother. And judging by what our forensic tech found in your car, I can guess why. What I want to know is what you both have to do with the death of two good marines."

Dean was silent for a moment, as though contemplating what to say. He finally settled on, "You touched my car?"

Gibbs slammed his hand down on the desk. "It's clear you've been following our case. I want to know why."

"Gibbs does not appear to think that your 'suspects' are in fact suspects," Ziva commented.

Tony shrugged. "We haven't really got any evidence to say they've done anything but follow us. In our case anyway."

"Would it not be best then to let the FBI charge them with their case?"

"Sure if we were trying to get them in prison ASAP. But we're just trying to solve our case. Once the guys from the Hoover building get their hands on them, we won't see them again. This way we find out what they know first. If it turns out they are our guys, then we've got them, if not we'll hand 'em over and hopefully be a little closer to our guy," Tony explained.

"Look, I don't know everything that Henricksen guy has in there," Dean said gesturing to the file between them. "But I can make a fair guess, so I know what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking you've been following my case, talking to my suspects, and showing up at my crime scenes, and I want to know why."

Dean looked unsure for a moment. "You don't think Sam and I . . . ? I mean we didn't but I could see why you might think so," Dean said with a second gesture to the file. "But we didn't even get to DC 'til days after the first death."

"I don't really care when you got here," Gibbs said evenly. "You still haven't answered my question. Why have you been tailing my case?"

Dean was quiet again, frowning, almost thoughtful. Finally he said, "Exactly what did you do with my car?"

"He's worse than you!" Ziva exclaimed, looking at Tony dumbfounded. "What is it with men and their cars? It's like a one train mind!"

"One _track_ mind, Ziva," Tony corrected patiently.

Gibbs simply sat silently, staring Dean down in that way he had which usually made suspects crack. Dean waited with an expectant look on his face, as if he honestly believed Gibbs was going to tell him about the car.

"Do you know how much trouble you're in, Mr. Winchester?" Gibbs asked finally.

Dean grinned. "Mr. Winchester. I haven't been called that since. . . uh. . . ever."

"It's fine if you don't want to talk. I can still charge you with interfering with a federal investigation," Gibbs said sharply. It was clear to Ziva and Tony that he was running out of patience, but he kept his tone and expression neutral for Dean's benefit. "But I won't do that. I'll just turn you and your brother over to the FBI. They have a lot more things they'd like to discuss with you than I do."

He stood up then, and made a show of gathering up the files and walking towards the door.

"This is the old 'pretend you've got no reason to talk to them' trick," Tony said, providing commentary to Ziva in the observation room. "Makes them want to get your attention all of a sudden, especially if they think they can get a deal out of it or something."

"I'm aware of this, Tony," Ziva told him. "I do have experience in the interrogation room, yes?"

Tony glanced at her and grinned. "Yeah, but your methods of interrogation tend to involve intense pain, and are probably illegal."

Instead of scowling, Ziva smiled and flashed a paper clip in front of his face. Tony paled.

"You know, I don't really believe what you said about killing me eighteen different ways with that – okay, shutting up now," he said, backing away as she took a step towards him with it.

They both turned back to the interrogation room, where Gibbs was already had the door swung halfway open.

"Perhaps this suspect is not going to crack," Ziva commented.

"Oh, he will," Tony said confidently, "Watch: in 3 – 2 – 1—"

"Wait," Dean called.

Gibbs paused at the door, but didn't turn around.

"You're not FBI," Dean stated slowly.

"Come on!" Tony complained, "Of course we're not the FBI! How many times do we have to tell this guy?"

Gibbs turned to face Dean and waited. It almost looked as if Dean was choosing his words carefully, but then he said, "See, Sammy said you guys were navy cops, right? But I don't get it – 'cuz the two guys that died were marines and – what does the navy need cops for anyway?"

"I think we know who got the brains in that family," Tony muttered.

Dean called out again as Gibbs turned back to the door. "Hey! I do have something important to say here."

Gibbs waited. Ziva studied Dean's features. He apparently seemed to be giving something some serious thought, but when he spoke next, all he said was, "Did you really touch my car?"

Gibbs turned a final time and slammed the door loudly behind him.

Tony and Ziva met Gibbs in the hall. "So now what, Boss?" Tony asked.

"Perhaps I could persuade him to talk?" Ziva suggested.

"Like I said before Ziva, not exactly legal here."

Ziva just shrugged and looked to Gibbs who shook his head.

"You want to try the other brother?" Tony asked. "The feds won't turn over the file boss, but from what I've seen I suspect the older one's the leader. Maybe the younger brother will be more forthcoming?"

"David set him up in interrogation. DiNozzo, with me," Gibbs ordered as he started down the hall.

"Where to, Boss?" Tony asked keeping pass with the senior agent.

"See if McGee got anything off that computer."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

McGee looked up as Gibbs and Tony arrived in the bullpen. He had the Winchester's computer on his desk and looked a little startled to see them so soon.

"What have you got McGee?" Gibbs barked.

McGee looked at Tony with a 'it didn't go well did it?' look. Tony just shook his head. "Not a whole lot from the computer Boss," the junior agent replied apologetically.

"There's not much in the way of saved files. I did go through their browser history through," he added pulling up a list on the plasma screen. "A lot of the same sorts of things we got from Abby. Lots of hits on sites about urban legends and ghost stories."

McGee scrolled down the list, "Most recently they've been looking up the history of the bar, and the base." He scrolled down the list indicating a few sites.

"Busty Asian Beauties dot com?" Tony asked noting the out of place address. "You check that one out McGeek?" He asked smirking.

McGee blushed slightly. "No Tony, thought I'd leave that for you," then turning back to their boss he added, "There are a few other unrelated sites. But, uh, really there is nothing to indicate they know anything more about these murders than we do."

"Unless, of course, they're the ones suffocating marines," Tony added.

"The FBI seem to think they're more than capable," McGee commented changing the screen. "I, uh, borrowed their file from the FBI database."

Tony whistled, "Some pretty heady stuff there."

"And Fornell wasn't kidding when he said gruesome," McGee added displaying a few crime scene photos. "Nothing even close to the MO on our vics though."

Tony studied the screen for a moment. "Forget matching our case, none of these MO's even match each other. A high profile bank robbery hostage situation with several victims slashed across the throat, one stabbed. Several home-invasion murders, sado-sexual, female victims tied up and killed. A shooting. None of these seem to have any connecting factors."

"Other than the suspects," McGee clarified.

"Background?" Gibbs asked.

"Both were born in Lawrence, Kansas. Their mom died in a house fire. The family sort of drops of the grid after that. Sam, the younger brother, resurfaced for a while when he spent a few years at Stanford, pre-law. Until his girl-friend died." McGee paused and looked at Gibbs and Tony, "Another fire."

"Deliberate?" Tony asked.

"Both fires were ruled as accidental. And they were too young to have anything to do with the first," McGee replied, "But still it's weird isn't it?"

"Hinky," Tony agreed.

"Anyway, shortly after the second fire is when they started to attract the FBI's attention. At first they were just after Dean. But for about a year after these killings," he said indicating the home invasions, "they seem to think he was dead, so they weren't looking."

"Well he's not dead now," Gibbs supplied.

Tony had moved closer to the screen while McGee was talking and he scanned the file himself. "Hey, Boss," he started, "Their dad was a marine, he died just over a year ago."

"How?"

"Uh, from a stroke," Tony replied. "He was kinda young for that wasn't he?"

"You think it sounds suspicious?" McGee wondered aloud.

"Everything in this file sounds suspicious, Probie," Tony said. They both glanced at Gibbs simultaneously, waiting to see what he would make of it.

Wordlessly, Gibbs turned and headed for the elevator, back to the interrogation room.

~tbc~


	15. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer**: We own it! Yes we do! In our dreams. . .

WARNING: Dean Winchester has never had his mouth washed out with soap - or if he did, it didn't have the intended effect. . .

* * *

It took about five hours to reach Washington DC from Backwardsville Hicktown, where Crazy Zombie Lovin' Farmer lived. The impala cruised past several high end hotels in the inner city before turning smoothly into the lot in front of a single cheap motel. It was dark by then.

Sam had slept through most of the drive, even with Dean's rock music turned on full blast which was saying something. Unfortunately, now he was wide awake, and had already been provided more than enough reasons to be little jumpy.

"Dude, did you seriously have to drive right past the Hoover building?"

"Relax, Sammy. It's the dead of night. No one was there."

"You don't know that," Sam huffed.

Dean shrugged. "I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn't that special looking."

"It doesn't matter what it looks like!" Sam cried, "The FBI are there!"

His brother did a fantastic job of completely ignoring him as he got out of the car. Sam scowled and followed, shutting the door to the car a bit harder than he probably should have. Dean shot him a dark look. Sam glared back.

The two of them stalked moodily into the tiny motel office, probably making the clerk think they were out to rob him or beat him up, if his expression was anything to go by. He was a young man, twenty, maybe younger, and spoke with a faint Spanish accent.

"You want a room?"

"Yes, a room would be just peachy," Dean said flatly.

The clerk looked back and forth between the two of them uneasily, particularly Sam, and then asked timidly, "Will that be a queen or. . ."

"Yeah, sure," Dean said without paying attention, and then he exploded. "NO! No fucking queen! Two singles, goddammit!"

The clerk shrunk back, stammering, "Yes, yes of course, sorry sir, sorry, I will get the key, so sorry. . ." He darted away from the counter and into another room where he could be heard rummaging through things looking for said key.

Dean turned to Sam, grumbling. "I swear, I dunno what it is, but the next person that insinuates we are flying the rainbow flag is getting shot."

"Did you just say 'insinuate'?" Sam said, unable to keep himself from sounding honestly shocked.

"Sorry, Einstein. Forgot it was copyright to you college freaks."

The clerk returned breathlessly. "Here is the key!" he said proudly, placing it on the counter with a clipboard, which Dean immediately snatched and began filling out. "Room 6, second one down at the end," he told them. Dean was instantly out the door, dropping the clipboard on the counter with a fake credit card. The clerk watched the empty spot where he had been anxiously.

"Uh, he's just in a bad mood," Sam offered, feeling the need to say something. It suddenly occurred to him then that Dean _was_ in a bad mood, and he had not actually noticed until just now. He could not still be upset that Sam had slammed the door to the impala, right?

The clerk went about punching the credit card number into the computer and handed it back to Sam, who offered him a weak smile. When he glanced at the name on the credit card he had to work very hard to keep the smile from vanishing. What the hell was his brother thinking sometimes?

"So, um, that man. . ." The clerk said nervously, referring to Dean, "You and him are really not. . . uh. . ."

"No," Sam said firmly, "We're – not." He nearly said "We're brothers" as an automatic response, but then Dean had gone and filled out different names for them. Why the hell would he do that? _Because they had to match that dumb movie, obviously_, Sam's mind filled in for him, _Duh, Sam_.

The clerk looked relieved for some reason. "I see. That's good. I mean, I was hoping. . ." He stared at Sam very oddly then, letting his gaze linger on Sam's chest and the muscles of his arms and then up to his face. "You're very attractive," he said finally.

"What?" Sam said, remaining clueless for a second too long. The clerk reached out and stroked his hand.

Sam shot backwards reflexively. He had nothing against gay men, he told himself later, trying to console his fractured morality about discrimination and all those heady political issues. No, he just had problems with gay men trying to hit on_ him_.

Unfortunately, he crashed straight into Dean who was coming back through the door, most likely wondering wear the hell his little brother had gone off to. Sam's momentum brought them both down with a deafening crash.

Dean was almost immediately up and ready to kill something, because clearly an experienced hunter like Sam must have been under some kind of dire threat to come running blind into Dean like that. It was a miracle he wasn't packing, because Sam had no doubts that he really would have shot something – probably the clerk.

The clerk sensed this anyway, and cowered behind the counter the entire time. It took Sam a good full ten minutes to recover and calm Dean down. This was followed by several strings of curses and mutterings of "What the hell, Sam?"as Dean dragged him to the motel room.

But by the next morning Dean was ready to make a joke of everything, as usual.

"You really should cut your hair, Sammy. He probably thought you were a girl."

"I'm not making it up, Dean!" Sam said furiously. "He really did, as soon as you were gone, he – he—" Sam did not want to talk about it anymore.

They found the bar easily enough, though it was nearly empty when they waltzed in. They introduced themselves as Dave Evans and Colin Burgess, reporters from a local newspaper. At first the manager had been reluctant to speak with them, but Dean dropped some 'hint' about angling the story favourably and soon all he could talk about was the bar's history.

"So, these marines that died before, what happened?" Dean asked.

The manager shrugged carelessly. "They weren't both marines, one was navy. As far as I know they were a married couple. Husband was cheating, the wife found out and shot him and then herself in their car, just outside. Absolutely nothing to do with the bar! But business fell through anyway. . ."

"The bar's been closed ever since them?" Sam asked.

"Until I had it reopened," the manager said with a puff of pride. It didn't take long for him to deflate again, looking discouraged. "But now this. . ."

"Well, thanks for your time, Mr. . . . uh," Dean trailed off.

"Hamilton," the manager offered amicably, "And thank you, boys, for listening to my side of the story."

Sam tried not to groan. He hated all of this lying to people. As soon as the manager left Dean sauntered off to go chat with one of the pretty young bartenders, leaving Sam to find some way of milling around the parking lot looking for emf signals without attracting too much attention.

He got nothing. For one thing, the parking lot was rather big for the size of the establishment, and he had no idea where the marine's car might have been parked. He made his way back into the bar and managed to drag Dean away from the bartender long enough to explain.

"Doesn't mean there wasn't anything supernatural going on," Dean told him, "We probably need to find the guy's car."

"I'm betting it's in an evidence lock-up somewhere," Sam said, "And before you even think it, there is no way we are going looking for it if it is."

Dean gave him a look. "Dude, how stupid do you think I am?"

"Hey, I remember several times when we ended up breaking into a morgue," Sam said defensively.

"Whatever man," Dean said, shaking his head. "I'm starving. Let's grab a bite to eat, first." He brushed past Sam and toward a grungy-looking diner just across the street from the bar. Neither of them noticed a black sedan pull into the lot as they left.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

As it turned out, they had not wound up breaking into an evidence lock-up, or a morgue. They'd broken into a records building after bullshitting their way onto a military base. And then they'd gotten themselves taken into custody by NCIS, where Sam was currently sitting, alone, while Dean was being questioned somewhere. He was miserable, and he still had absolutely no idea how they were going to get out of here.

Sam's head snapped up as he heard the doors open down at the end of the hallway. The two agents from before were leading Dean back to the holding cell. His brother looked tired, and seemed to be out of smart-ass remarks, which was not a good sign.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said, "Good news – there is air conditioning." He grinned, keeping up some semblance of cheerfulness for whatever reason Maybe it was just to annoy Sam so much that he forgot why he cared about his brother in the first place. Yeah, that had to be it.

They did not get to say much else to each other, though, because the agents immediately ordered Sam to come with them. _Great, now it's my turn_, he thought, suddenly nervous. What had Dean told them, anyway? It wasn't as if neither of them had been interrogated by law enforcement before. They usually had vague guidelines of what to say and what sort of stories to make up so that they did not contradict each other.

Still, it was starting to dawn on Sam that at the rate they were getting into trouble they might never get out of this one. Or if they did, they'd soon land in another situation just like this, another time, another state. While he was being pessimistic, why not just admit that it didn't matter, because Dean wasn't going to live that long anyway?

No. Sam was going to think of something. Somehow, they were getting out of this place.

He just didn't know how yet.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"This is the younger brother, correct?" Ziva said, observing as Sam Winchester fidgeted in the interrogation room. Gibbs was leaving him to stew with his thoughts before talking to him, another interrogation technique, as Tony had pointed out earlier. He seemed to be fond of doing that these days.

"He'll crack," Tony said confidently, "The youngest ones always do. Adler's personality theory: it's in their nature to do as they're told."

"Obviously you don't have any younger siblings," McGee muttered.

"So?" said Tony, "I doubt you do either, McGee. You hardly fit the 'older brother' persona."

McGee rolled his eyes. "And you would know?"

"Since when have you become versed in psychology, Tony?" Ziva asked pointedly.

"I haven't," Tony admitted, somewhat uncomfortably. "After the last proficiency examination the director made me read a book on profiling."

Ziva cocked an eyebrow. "I noticed that book on your desk." Her face suddenly lit up with realization, "Is that what was in the manila envelope you were looking for last week?"

"Shut up, Zee-vah," Tony said edgily, only confirming that she was right.

McGee could npt pass up the opportunity to rub it in as well, "You wouldn't have failed that part of the proficiency check, would you Tony?"

"Of course not!" Tony snapped. It was clearly a sore spot, and Ziva and McGee were enjoying it immensely. "Look, Gibbs is starting," Tony said huffily, drawing their attention back to the interrogation room.

Gibbs walked in and sat across from Sam, with another suspiciously large folder. Actually, it was probably the same folder. Sam and Dean did everything together, criminal activity-wise, and so there was no reason for them to have separate folders.

A prolonged silence ensued.

"He'll crack any moment now," Tony assured the others.

"Sure, Tony," Ziva said playfully, "Want to bet another twenty dollars?"

Tony scowled at the memory. "No."

In the interrogation room, the silence continued. Sam watched Gibbs. Gibbs watched Sam. Neither moved or said anything.

"He's still fidgeting," Tony insisted, less certain than before, "He's nervous."

"Anyone locked in a room with Gibbs would be nervous," McGee said, speaking from more personal experience than even he realized at that point, "You'd have to be completely braindead not to be."

Tony grinned, "Like the last guy?"

"Dean Winchester was anxious," Ziva said, "He just hid it very well." She grinned when Tony glanced at her. "_I_ did not fail the profiling part of my proficiency test."

"I didn't fail!" Tony grumbled. "I just had. . . creative differences with the examiner, that's all."

In the other room, Gibbs finally spoke. "You and your brother are in a lot of trouble, but you know that, don't you?"

Sam didn't say anything.

Gibbs began listing off the charges. "The FBI has you for murder, theft, vandalism, fraud, assault," he paused, "Should I go on?"

Sam still did not say anything, but his posture made it clear that he really did not need to hear anymore. At least he looked genuinely worried about his situation. Not once did he mention the car.

"That's because it's not _his _car," Tony said when Ziva brought it up later. "And also, he's clearly more of a McGeek. If McGee was a crazy psycho criminal, which he's not – you know what, I don't even want to go any further with that thought."

"I don't care about any of that right now," Gibbs told Sam, producing another folder from under the first one. This was much smaller. "I just want you to tell me what you know about these two."

He removed pictures of Staff Sergeant Fisher and Lieutenant Erickson from the small folder, and placed them in front of Sam.

Sam hesitated, looking at the pictures. Finally he said, "I can't. I mean, I don't know anything."

"You can't, or you won't?" Gibbs produced the same newspaper clippings and articles he had shown to Dean. Sam did not look any more surprised to see them than his brother.

"I really don't know anything other than what you already know," Sam said falteringly.

Gibbs stared back at him with a look that clearly said, "Quit bullshitting me." What he actually said was, "Why have you been following this case?"

"Uh. . ." Sam glanced around the room, avoiding Gibbs's stare. Clearly he had not thought this one through too much. "It's not illegal, is it?"

Gibbs raised a skeptical eyebrow, but said nothing. Sam continued, rambling a bit. "I just thought that, uh. . . what I mean is, it was an interesting case, you know – not that I think people dying is interesting. . ."

He cast a tentative glance at Gibbs, who stared back coldly. Sam continued in an increasingly tiny voice. "Uh, I mean, I was pre-law at Stanford, so um, I just thought that the case was interesting, so I uh. . . followed it in the news. . . and stuff. . ."

"He doesn't seriously think Gibbs is gonna believe that?" Tony said incredulously in the observation room.

"He doesn't appear to be a very good liar," Ziva mused, "I wonder, he and his brother were not given time to talk in between the switch, yes? How does he know his brother didn't give a completely contradictory story?"

McGee shrugged. "They were together in the holding cell for a long time before we even picked them up. If they were going to come up with a story they could have done it then."

"Yeah, except they were too busy debating the rights of the fetus," Tony said to himself. But given that the observation room was rather quiet, McGee and Ziva both heard him and turned to stare questioningly.

"What?" Tony said defensively, "They were!"

"I thought they were arguing over whose fault it was that they got caught," McGee said.

Tony nodded. "That too."

Ziva frowned in disbelief. "How exactly is it that the FBI has failed to catch these two?"

Tony and McGee found themselves answering almost simultaneously. "They're the FBI." They both looked at each other with equal measures of surprise and then looked away.

"The other guy didn't exactly tell us anything," Tony pointed out, trying to get back on topic, "Maybe that's their fall-back plan. One of them says nothing and the other. . . uh. . . makes up a pretty lame story. You'd think they'd figure which one of them has the better pokerface and let him do the talking."

"What does poker have to do with it?" Ziva asked.

Tony sighed, and proceeded to try and explain to Ziva that 'pokerface' was an expression that had to do with lying and which came from the game poker. . . and really, he had no idea why he bothered.

Back in the interrogation room, Gibbs, unsurprisingly, called Sam's bluff. "So, if you were just following this case out of general interest, why break into a military base to steal records from a completely unrelated case?"

"Uh. . . well, it's not completely unrelated, it was at the same bar. . . I mean the old bar. . . which isn't the same, I guess. . . um. . ." Sam clearly had nothing else to say to that.

Gibb's hand connected solidly with the table. Sam flinched. "Two marines are dead," he snapped, "I don't know what kind of game you and your brother are playing but I know you know something about it."

Sam said nothing.

The interrogation ended shortly after that with Gibbs slamming the door loudly behind him. It was much the same way Dean's interrogation had ended, as a matter of fact.

As soon as Gibbs was gone Sam slumped over in his seat.

"Do all three of you really need to be in here?" Gibbs demanded suddenly from the door.

"Boss!" McGee cried, completely startled and nearly falling over.

Tony's main concern was more along the lines of, "How did you get up here so fast?"

Gibbs ignored both of them. "The manager of the bar called in while I was questioning that chucklehead." He jerked a thumb at Sam. "Apparently no one on my team was available to speak with him."

McGee struggled to recover himself. "I thought speaking to the manager wasn't important?"

"It wasn't when he spent all his time raving about his bar," Gibbs said shortly, "Now he's claiming he knows who the killer is."

~tbc~


	16. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer**: We don't own anything. Seriously. And who would try to sue two bored college kids for posting fanfiction anyway? How desperate do you have to be? Okay, we're just going to shut up now before we tempt the lawyer fates or whatever. . .

* * *

After the agents had escorted his brother away, Dean found himself alone in the holding cell. It took him all of five minutes before he started to pace the small space. It was not that he was worried about Sammy. No, his brother could hold his own, he knew that. It was just well. . . He was the older brother after all, and therefore it was his job to look after his brother.

Piss poor job he seemed to be doing at it.

Dean sighed. He trusted Sam, knew his brother would come up with something. It probably would not satisfy that Agent Gibbs, who was clearly not one of the local cops they were used to dealing with, but really it hardly mattered anyway. Even if they could talk their way out of this one case, Dean knew that the FBI had more than enough evidence to convict them both on numerous other charges.

Well, they really only had Sam on the bank robbery. He was the one facing numerous murder charges. Which, really, at this point, hardly mattered. He was not going to live long enough to be executed. Sammy, on the other hand, would not do well in jail. They'd already proven that. If he had just left Sam back at Stanford. . .

Dean sighed and sat down on floor. He had to get Sammy out of this somehow. Besides, there was a ghost to stop. Giving up on his useless line of thinking, Dean scouted the entire cell out, what little of it there was. The bars were sturdy, and he had nothing to even attempt picking the lock with. Not that it would have likely worked, and had he manged to get through, there was the small detail that the entire building was filled with federal agents.

"Not looking good," he muttered quietly to himself.

There was always the possibility of overpowering the agents when they brought Sam back, assuming they would bring him back to Dean's cell. But then Sam would not know the game plan, and he probably could not take them out before an alarm was sounded. So that was out.

They could wait until they were transferred to a penitentiary pending trail and try to escape from there. But with their record, it was likely they would be under tight watch and unlike the last time, there would be no inside help.

No, if they were going to do something, it would have to be sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, Dean seemed to be running out of close calls and lucky breaks. He really could not think of what to do next.

At least he could keep Sammy from death row, Dean mused dismally. If he confessed to all the killings, they would have nothing major on his brother except the robbery. . . Not that it was a robbery. After all they had not actually taken anything.

Kind of like their little B&E into the military base that had started this whole mess.

Dean was just beginning to wonder what the heck was taking them so long to talk with Sam when he heard the agents down the hall. Soon Sam came into view as he was escorted back to the cell. Almost automatically he looked Sam over, confirming that his brother was fine. Well, as fine as one could be in their current situation.

As soon as the cell was once again secure, this time with both Winchesters inside, the agents disappeared back down the hall. Sam turned to Dean, "So, now what?"

Dean shrugged, "I dunno, that Gibbs seemed rather determined to hear what we know about the case, but eventually they'll turn us over to the FBI." He paused for a moment before adding, "So what did you end up telling him?"

Sam looked away and muttered something incoherently.

"Sorry, what was that?" Dean asked.

"I said I told him we were looking into the case, as like a hobby." Dean snorted and Sam glared at him. "Well you didn't even bother to come up with anything!" he accused.

"I stalled, it's what I do," Dean said with a smirk, which quickly disappeared as he added somberly, "Not that it much matters what we tell them at this point."

Sam sighed, "Yeah, doesn't look good right now does it?"

They were both quiet for a moment. Dean stared off at the wall, unconsciously fiddling with his necklace, thinking. Sam watched him for a while, finally breaking the silence, "You got anything?"

Dean did not look at Sam right away. "This building is crawling with agents, no way we could make it past them all. 'Less they let us go."

"I would say the probability of that is low," Sam replied dryly.

"Yeah, no way they're letting the two of us go now."

"So what are you thinking?" Dean did not answer right away, and Sam looked over at his brother. "Dean?"

"I'll get you out of this Sammy," Dean finally said, his voice determined. There was no way he was going to stand by and watch his little brother go to prison.

"Yeah, you know maybe we could wait till they transfer—" Sam cut off abruptly. "Wait what do you mean you'll get _me _out of this?"

Dean said nothing and Sam walked over until he was standing over his brother. "Dean, what did you mean?" he demanded.

"Nothing." Dean replied standing up to prevent his brother towering over him, though it really did not help as Sam still maintained the height advantage. He turned away and moved to the other side of the small cell.

"Dean, we're both getting out of this."

"How do you figure that Sam?" Dean countered. "I'm the one they want for numerous murders. You're supposed to be the smart one, tell me how does both of us going to prison make any sense to you?"

"We are both going to prison if we don't get out of here somehow. Or did you forget I was at that bank too!" It was clear from Sam's tone he was starting to get angry.

"Forget it, Sammy," Dean told him.

Sam just shook his head. "Forget it? Dean if you don't get out of here they'll give you the needle."

Dean finally looked at Sam, "We both know I'm not going to live long enough for them to kill me, Sam."

"There could still be a way out of the deal, Dean. We just have to keep looking," Sam replied fixing his brother with a determined look.

"Sure, only you'll wind up demon bait in the process."

"Why are you so eager to give up and die?" Sam demanded frustrated.

"I don't want to die!" Dean shot back.

"You sure have a funny way of showing it," Sam retorted, and both brothers lapsed into silence.

"Sam—"

"Dean. Look I don't care what you think is 'best'. But I'm not ready to give up. So either you help me find a way out, or I'll do it myself."

Dean smiled weakly at his brother, "You always have to be so damn stubborn?"

"I think it's a genetic thing," Sam answered back.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"It might not be anything," Sam said uneasily.

They were back in the motel, and Dean was cleaning one of his shotguns. There were several others laid out on the bed who had already had their turn. He spared a glance at his brother, sitting across the room, hunched over the laptop as per usual. Sam looked back at Dean uncertainly, and swallowed.

"The guy could have died of carbon monoxide poisoning," he said finally.

"It's a ghost, Sammy," Dean said stubbornly.

"How do you know?" Sam snapped. His voice came out frustrated, annoyed, and borderline whiny. Dean knew that tone. He'd heard it thousands of times before.

"I mean, all we have to go on is one marine dying of unknown circumstances in a bar parking lot," Sam continued.

"We've gone off less," Dean reminded him, finishing up with the shotgun and fitting it back together. He had to admit that the search was not going well. Sam was probably still mad at him for getting them kicked out of the library, but as Dean had pointed out, it was not as if they'd found much there anyway.

Besides, whoever made it a rule that you couldn't eat in libraries anyway?

"Well, there haven't been any other deaths at that bar besides the couple from five years ago and this guy," Sam was saying, "Oh, and a dog got hit by a van. Who brings their dog to a bar?"

Dean nodded in vague agreement, as he proceeded to put the guns away.

"This Alex Fisher guy is married, though," Sam continued, closing his laptop. "If it's really the ghosts of the couple that died before, do you think they'd go after her? Maybe we should talk to her."

He thought there was more to Sam's bad mood than simply being kicked out of the library for an afternoon. Sam had been jumpy ever since they'd gotten to DC – Dean still remembered his brother's reaction when they'd driven past that Hoover Duster building, or whatever it was called. Truthfully, he had not actually realized that he was driving past the FBI headquarters until Sammy had started freaking out.

Not that Dean could blame him. They were sort of wanted rather badly by the FBI, particularly that obsessive Agent Henricksen. Mostly the FBI just wanted Dean, or at least, that's what Dean liked to believe. He did not want to think that they'd keep hunting after Sam when he was gone, and Sam was alone. . .

"Uh, hello, earth to Dean?"

Dean's head snapped up and he tried to look like he'd been paying attention. "Uh, yeah. We should go talk to the guy's wife," he suggested. He needed to focus on the job, rather than more depressing things like his impending doom.

"Dude, that's what I just said," Sam complained. "Could you stop staring at that girl's ass and listen to me for a sec?"

Dean very nearly asked, "What girl?" but managed to stop himself just in time. That would have been just the tip-off Sam needed to start on the touchy-feely "Are you feeling okay?" crap. As it turned out, there _was_ a hot girl, just across the street, washing her car – in short shorts and a white t-shirt, no less. He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed. There was something seriously wrong with that.

To make up for it, he took a good long five minutes to observe her well-rounded ass.

"Dean!" Sam said, exasperation evident in his voice. He reached over and yanked Dean away from the window by his shirt, dragging him to the door.

"Dude, that was so uncalled for," Dean grumbled.

It was not too far to the wife's house, following the address Sam read off a local map. They got there in about ten minutes. Sam shifted moodily in his seat. Dean tried not grin. Even after all this time Sam still hated having to go and lie to people. Probably because he sucked at it.

"Do I even want to know what we're going to say this time?" Sam muttered.

Dean had no idea, to tell the truth. He'd tried to think about it as they'd been driving, but he could only come up with a couple things. And with Sam in the mood he was in, suggesting priests again was probably not going to go over too well.

He reached into the glovebox and tossed a random fake ID at Sam.

"FBI?" Sam's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "Dean, we are _not_ telling her we're the FBI! Do you want to get caught?"

Dean shrugged awkwardly. "Why not? Not like we haven't done it before. Would you relax?"

"Relax!" Sam repeated, sounding very near hysterical. He muttered a few things under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "My brother's an idiot" and "Why does this happen to me?"

"We need to wear suits to pull off FBI," Sam said finally, gesturing to their ragged and torn jeans and Dean's worn leather jacket with an air of triumph.

"I'm telling you, Dad and I never wore suits," Dean retorted, not sure why he was pushing this. Even he did not think faking FBI was a good idea at the moment, but there was just something about the way Sam was acting that made him feel confrontational.

"Well, maybe because Dad was older he could pull it off," Sam said, "There's no way anyone is going to believe we are FBI, not dressed like this!"

"I keep telling you to get your hair cut," Dean told him glibly.

Sam pressed his mouth into a thin line. His nostrils flared. He glared at Dean silently.

"We're going with FBI, and that's that," Dean told him, getting out of the car with a note of finality.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, scrambling furiously to get out of the car as well, but Dean was already knocking on the door.

It swung open almost immediately, revealing a frail-looking blonde woman. There were tear-tracks down her face that showed she had been crying recently, perhaps on and off over the past few days. Sam caught up to Dean at the front door and tried to compose himself as best he could.

"Hello, Mrs. Fisher?" Dean said solemnly.

"Yes? Um, that's me?" she said it like a question, "Who are you?"

Dean flashed the fake badge, and Sam, looking extremely indignant, did the same.

"You – you're FBI?" Mrs. Fisher said, looking bewildered.

"Yes we are, ma'am," Dean explained smoothly. He could practically feel Sam sulking beside him.

"I don't understand," Mrs. Fisher murmured, looking back and forth between the two of them. Dean was confident that she had believed him, but she still seemed confused. "Why is – why does the FBI want to talk to me?"

"We believe we have new information on your husband's case," Sam said flatly.

Mrs. Fisher looked even more confused. "But I thought – NCIS—"

"Who?" Dean asked. He felt Sam kick him in the shin, and it took all his willpower to refrain from swearing and cuffing Sam back.

"We've taken over your husband's case," Sam told her firmly.

"Oh. . ." she said. Then she repeated herself for some reason. "Oh!"

The longer they stood on her porch, the more and more Dean felt like some kind of sitting target. "Do you mind if we come in?" he asked.

"Oh," she said again, looking at something far behind Dean that probably didn't exist, "Yes, of course, I'm sorry. . ."

As they followed her into the living room, he heard Sam mutter, "I can not believe we're doing this. . ."

"He was important, wasn't he?" Mrs. Fisher said suddenly, her voice dull and flat, as they reached the living room.

"Sorry?" Dean said, not sure what she meant.

"Alex," she replied, "He must have been, if the FBI is concerned. . ."

Dean did not miss the furious glare Sam was sending him. He shifted his weight uncomfortably and made a point of looking away.

"We're very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Fisher," Sam said gently.

"I thought he was having an affair. . ." Mrs. Fisher moaned.

"You did?" Sam replied uncertainly.

"Well, he might have been," Dean told her. Sam kicked him, again.

Luckily, the wife didn't seem to be paying attention to either of them. "He was always going out drinking."

"What else made you think he was having an affair?" Sam prodded.

"Oh. . . but maybe he wasn't. . ." Mrs. Fisher said tearfully, "If the FBI is involved. . . maybe it was classified. . . yes, and he just couldn't tell me so. . . what have I done?"

"Uh, it's not like that," Sam said, struggling to come up with an excuse that would make her feel better, "We, uh. . . are. . . I'm sure that, well. . . um. . ." He looked at Dean helplessly.

"Did your husband ever mention anything strange?" Dean asked her, "Did he see anything odd, or did he seem frightened for any reason?"

"No. . ." said Mrs. Fisher quietly. "But then, it was classified then he wouldn't tell me about it. . ." She seemed to be harping on this one fact.

Dean tried again. "Have you notice anything strange? Maybe there was something wrong with the car? Maybe you heard strange voices?"

Mrs. Fisher's head jolted up, and she looked alarmed. "You think I'm crazy?" she wailed, "You think I did this?"

"No!" Sam and Dean said simultaneously. Dean just barely managed to avoid getting kicked by Sam a third time.

"Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. Fisher," he told her, "We should be going."

Sam felt obligated to add, "We're sorry to have put you through this."

As they headed back to the car it occurred to Dean, "We didn't actually find out a whole lot of anything just now, did we?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

The manager was waiting in the bullpen when Gibbs and team arrived. How he'd gotten over there so quickly none of them quite knew, especially since Gibbs had said he'd only called about twenty minutes ago.

"I know who it is!" he announced wildly. He looked as if he'd gotten as little sleep as the rest of them, and for a brief moment it almost made them feel sympathetic. This feeling was fleeting and short-lived.

"It's my cousin," he insisted, "He's jealous that I inherited all the money, while he only got a worthless estate that's falling apart. He's trying to sabotage my business!"

"Do you have any proof?" Gibbs asked irritably.

"He's never liked me," the manager went on, "Ever since our uncle died he's been trying to find ways to ruin my life. He even said he'd love to see me run over by a tractor once! Can you believe that?"

"Yes," Tony muttered under his breath.

Gibbs raised his voice, "About the murders?"

"Right, of course," the man said, producing two video tapes from his jacket. "Security footage," he informed them, "From the opening night and the night the other marine. . . uh, it only shows the entrance of the bar," he added, wringing his hands, "But you can clearly see my cousin going inside! I wasn't even aware he was in the country. Seems awfully suspicious to me."

"I'll have my people look at it," Gibbs said tersely, "What's your cousin's name?"

"Clyde Hamilton," the manager said, "He shows up at ten thirty both nights. Only about an hour before both marines. . . er, well. . ."

Gibbs snatched the tapes and handed them wordlessly to McGee, who fumbled with them for a few seconds before skittering off to Abby's lab.

"Seems kind of strange that he'd be so quick to condemn his cousin," Tony commented after the manager had left.

"Apparently they do not get along," Ziva said. They both looked at Gibbs, who said nothing. He had moved to his desk and was looking at something there.

"Well," Tony continued in Gibbs's silence, "I think it seems pretty suspicious. Especially with the way that guy has been showing up the entire investigation."

Ziva cast him a wry smile. "Sort of like your imaginary car, yes?"

"Hey, it wasn't imaginary!" Tony protested, baffled that she would still be teasing him about that, "Hello? Did you miss the two extremely wanted, very insane criminals in holding and their very _real_ car in the garage?"

"True," Ziva conceded, "But they appear to have very little to do with our case, other than the fact that they have been following it and they broke into the base to find records on something that happened at the bar years ago."

"That doesn't make them imaginary, Zee-Vah," Tony griped. He suddenly paused, looking thoughtful. "Why are they interested in that case anyway?"

"I believe Gibbs asked them that," Ziva said, an eyebrow raised, "Repeatedly. Weren't you paying attention, Tony?"

"No, not our case," Tony said, "The old case. The one they broke into the records building for. Hey Boss, did you ask them. . ."

He trailed off. Gibbs was gone.

"Man, I hate it when he does that."

~tbc~


	17. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer**: . . . You know we don't own them.

* * *

"Boss, he's right about the times. . ." McGee started as he walked into the bullpen only to notice that Gibbs was not even present. "Where's Gibbs?"

Tony shrugged and Ziva looked up from her desk to reply, "He did not say."

"Oh," McGee said taking a seat behind his desk, "Well the manager was right about his cousin showing up, but he also shows up on other nights. Actually he showed up at about the same time every night the bar has been open. Footage also shows him leaving about twenty-five minutes after he shows up each time."

"Odd, but not evidence to indicate he is involved," Ziva commented.

"Seems a little extreme anyway," Tony said. "I mean killing random marines just because they went to your cousin's bar? Even if he is a cousin you don't like."

"It does seem quite unlikely," Ziva agreed. "But then again nothing in this case is making a large amount of sense."

Across the bullpen the elevator dinged and Tony looked up to see Fornell, Sacks and two other feds exit. Sacks looked rather pleased with himself, and Fornell carried a official looking document in his hand. Tony and Ziva exchanged a knowing look and Tony slipped out of the bullpen, cellphone in hand before the group neared.

Fornell brought his little group to a halt in the centre of the team's cubicles. He cast a glance first at Gibbs' empty desk then looked over to DiNozzo's. "Your boss around?" He asked, not adressing either of the two remaining agents in particular.

"He is not," Ziva replied. "Perhaps we could be of some help?"

Fornell offered her the paper he held. "Transfer orders," he informed her unnecessarily. "Your director has already been made aware of them," he added making his way over to Gibbs' desk where he once again made himself comfortable. "Sacks, take Bosley and Carlson down to collect the suspects."

Sacks nodded and lead the two other agents back they way they had come toward the elevator.

Fornell leaned back in the chair as Tony reappeared from around the stairwell, "I trust your boss is on his way?"

Tony ignored Fornell, addressing McGee instead. "Probie, go check back with Abby, Gibbs wants to know if there is anything else at all on that video."

McGee nodded and took off. Tony sat down in his own desk and looked across at Fornell. "And I suppose NCIS will be getting all the public recognition we deserve when the FBI announces the re-capture of two of their wanted fugitives?" he queried.

"We all want them off the street DiNutso. The FBI is capable of doing that more so than NCIS right now. We both know you can't make a case."

"Let's just hope you guys can manage to avoid losing them this time—" Tony's reply was cut off as the fire alarm sounded loudly throughout the building.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"I really don't think this is a good idea," Sam muttered under his breath as his brother pulled the impala to a halt in a side alley.

"I believe you mentioned that. A few times now," Dean replied quietly. He scanned the area around them carefully before getting out of the impala and moving towards the nearby building. Slowly, he began to walk along the wall looking for a good point of entry. Sam followed behind him, a distinctly unhappy look on his face.

"Dean, this is insane," his brother hissed. "I mean, a military base?"

"Do we need those records or not?"

"We need them but—" Sam started, only to be cut off.

"Well then, we're getting them. Seems logical."

Sam sighed wearily. Why he let his brother talk him into these things he would never know. "There, that window," Sam said resignedly pointing out a low first floor window where the latch was just visible.

Dean nodded his approval and after another quick glance around, he skillfully jimmied the window open. The two Winchesters climbed into a small dark office. Nothing caught their interest in the room, so they cautiously made their way into the hall.

"Records are down the far end I think," Sam directed, having stepped into the building earlier, when they had stopped on base to speak with the first victim's widow.

Dean lead the way down the hall, pausing every few moments to ensure that there was no one else in the area.

The archives room was large. Boxes of files filled the rows of shelves. "Well, this could take awhile," Dean muttered.

Sam made his way through the rows scanning the years on the labels with a small flashlight. Half way down one row he gestured for Dean. When his brother reached him he handed him a box. "Here go through this one." Taking his own box he crouched on the floor.

It only took them a few moments of digging through the files before Dean produced the desired document. Sam shone the light over it. "Looks like they are both buried in the same graveyard."

"Convenient," Dean remarked as he pulled a page from the file and scanned the autopsy report. "One bullet in each. Wife shot the husband then offed herself. Why d'you think one of them is hanging around taking out marines?"

Sam shrugged glancing over Dean's shoulder. "Husband was a marine. Maybe one of them is recreating his death." Dean handed him the page, and Sam skimmed through the rest. "Wife was a few months pregnant," Sam commented, "Who kills themselves when they're having a baby?"

"Maybe she didn't know." Dean replied with a tone that suggested he really did not care why, as he shoved files back into the boxes. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Sam handed Dean back the autopsy sheet and grabbed the first box and lifted it towards the shelf. Dean held the flashlight so Sam could see. A faint noise sounded from somewhere in the hall they had left and Dean reflexively killed the light plunging them into darkness.

Sam unable to see in the sudden darkness misjudged the distance to the shelf and dropped the box loudly on the floor. He held back a swear and was nearly certain, despite his inability to see his brother, that Dean was glaring darkly at him.

Footsteps sounded down the hall, clearly drawing near, to investigate. Sam looked about frantically for a way out of the room, but there were no windows and the only exit was the door they had come in though. Panicked Sam took a step backwards, tripping over the box he had just dropped. He toppled into the shelf with a deafening crash.

A light appeared in the doorway as two marine MP's arrived just in time to see the shelf Sam hit topple into the one after it causing a domino effect that wiped out the next four units. With a file in one hand and the flashlight in the other Dean stood staring down at his brother who sat in a heap on the floor.

As the MP's drew their weapons and began their cautious approach, Sam muttered quietly to himself, "I knew this was a bad idea."

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"Sammy?" Dean called bringing his brother back to the present.

Sam shook his head and glanced back at the four unconscious forms by what had been their cell. "This is by far the worst idea you have ever had," he mumbled wearily.

"Really? That's funny, 'cause I thought it was your idea."

"To attack four armed agents?" Sam asked looking at his brother incredulously. "I never said that!"

"No? How else did you suppose we get out then?" Dean countered as they reached the end of the hall. He peered around the corner cautiously. Spotting no one, he started forward until something caught his eye and he stopped.

"Dean?"

"Wait a sec," Dean replied as he made his way over to the desk that the NCIS agent on duty should have been sitting behind. Only as he was laying unconscious on the floor down the hall, with the three bureau agents, the desk was unoccupied. Dean reached over to grab the fire alarm pull on the wall.

"Dean what—?" Sam started but was cut off by the loud shrill of the fire alarm.

"No way are we getting out of this building so long as it's crawling with agents," Dean said by way of an explanation.

"You're insane," Sam told him.

Dean ignored the comment and took the lead, though he had no better idea than his brother as to where to go. Suspecting the elevators would be down due to the alarm, he took them into the first stairwell he saw, the door slamming shut behind them.

Glancing up and down the stairway Dean turned to his brother, "Down?"

Sam just shrugged in response, and Dean taking his lack of answer as a 'yes' took off quickly down the stairs. Stopping at the next landing, Dean opened the door a crack and peered through. The stairs exited into a large open room. There was no sign of anyone in the immediate area so Dean pushed the door open some more. It seemed clear that any agents who had been the area had evacuated at the alarm, so Dean moved cautiously into the room.

A large portion of the room was gated off and secured. The brothers moved past this area searching for an exit. As they moved into the main part of the room Dean came to a sudden halt.

"My car," he breathed, staring at the impala a moment before hurrying over to its side. The trunk was popped open, and the front passenger door was ajar. Dean looked carefully at his car, but could find no new dents or scratches. He turned to inform Sam, but his brother was standing by the trunk and looking in.

"What?" he asked concerned.

Sam just pointed into the trunk and Dean made his way over to look. "Aw, man," he muttered as he stared into the empty compartment. Then with a sudden realization he turned to face Sam and they both spoke at once, "The colt."

"Shit."

Both Winchesters quickly scanned the surrounding area but none of their belongings seemed to be there.

"They must have taken it somewhere else," Sam muttered.

"Sam, we need that gun."

"You _are _insane," Sam replied giving his brother a disbelieving look. "We _need_ to get out of here. Fast."

"Not without that gun." Dean said determinedly. "Come on."

"Do you even have the slightest idea where you're going?" Sam complained, while at the same time moving to follow Dean.

At that moment the fire alarm sounded two short blasts and went silent. Sam and Dean exchanged a worried look. "That's never good," Dean mumbled before taking off at a sprint for the nearest exit.

~tbc~


	18. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer**: We do not own NCIS or Supernatural, or anything associated with either or them whatsoever. (Except DVD sets, but that doesn't count).

WARNING: The following series of events is highly implausible and may not be believable to some audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

* * *

Around the bullpen agents were quickly securing their stations and heading for the stairs as the agency's fire policy dictated. Tony shot Fornell a concerned look. "Why do I have a feeling there is no fire?" he asked while grabbing his gun from his desk.

Fornell did not answer as he was already dialing his cell phone. He held the device to his ear and listened to it ring impatiently. Finally he snapped his phone shut loudly, "No answer."

"I do not like this," Ziva spoke as she retrieved her own firearm.

"Come on," Tony said leading the other two agents in the direction of holding.

It took them longer than usual to make it to the holding cells, as they had to move through the organized chaos that was the evacuation of all other personnel. As they drew near the guard desk Tony slowed down, gesturing for Ziva and Fornell to do the same.

The desk sat empty, and the three agents moved slowly past it until they had a clear view down the hall. Four figures lying unmoving on the ground came into view and as they lifted their weapons.

They moved down the hall, carefully scanning the area around them. "Clear," Ziva called from where she had moved ahead to look into the last few cells. "They're gone."

"Damn it!" Fornell swore before kneeling down next to Agent Sacks. He felt for a pulse and was relieved to find a strong steady beat. "They're unconscious, but alive."

"I think it's pretty safe to say the fire alarm was a ruse," Tony muttered darkly while Ziva and Fornell attempted to rouse the downed agents. "These guys are good." He moved back down the hall and pressed a button at the side of the guard agent's desk. The fire alarm ceased and a short different alarm sounded twice. This second alarm would inform any agents left in the building that there were prisoners on the loose.

"We should split up," Ziva suggested as she helped the junior agent, Bosley, to sit up. "We can cover more area."

Tony shook his head, "They took on four agents, Ziva. No, we stay together."

"Sacks is still really out of it," Fornell told them as he supported the clearly concussed agent.

"You two," Tony instructed pointing to the NCIS agent and FBI agent Carlson, "Stay with Sacks we'll send a medic back when the all clear is given."

"Yes sir."

"Fornell you and your other agent are with me and Ziva. These guys are not getting out of here this easy," Tony said pulling out his phone as he started back down the hall.

"Tony who are you—?" Ziva started to ask but Tony was already speaking.

"Probie, where are you?" Tony asked. After a short pause he continued, "No, the alarm was a misdirect, the suspects' pulled it after taking out four agents. Get a perimeter started and meet us at the garage." Without further comment he snapped the phone closed.

"The garage?" Ziva questioned, "It seems unlikely they would head there."

"That's where the car is," Tony replied as though that explained everything.

Ziva snorted disbelievingly. "Surely you do not think they would attempt to steal back their vehicle?"

"There are some things about men that you will just never understand, Zee-vah." Tony informed her as he took off at a brisk pace in the direction of the stairwell.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"Dean," Sam hissed, "Let's just go."

"No, this has got to be where it is, I'm sure of it," Dean replied leading the way cautiously down another deserted hall.

"You've said that about the last three rooms we found!" Sam countered.

Ignoring his brother Dean walked into the room. Inside large machines lined the walls. A computer took up the center table of the room and on it's screen was a freeze frame of what looked the the entrance to the bar where they marines had died.

Closer to the door was another table. This one had the contents of their trunk spread out neatly on its surface. "Yahtzee," Dean muttered as he quickly located the colt in the pile. Grabbing it he tucked it in the back of his jeans.

"Can we go now?"

"Grab what you can," Dean instructed as he pulled his sawed off shot gun from the pile along with a box of silver bullets, the latter of which he shoved in his pocket.

Sam sighed, but complied, grabbing their Dad's journal and a few of the harder to come by items from their arsenal. A loud beep and a strange humming noise caused Sam to look up.

Dean had wandered away from the table and poked one of the large and rather expensive looking machines, which was now emitting the humming noise. "Dean!"

His brother shot him a fake 'it wasn't me look' and Sam rolled his eyes. "Come on," Sam whispered heading for the door. He looked down the hall cautiously before turning to check that his brother was in fact following.

Dean was making his way across the room, pressing a random button on each machine as he passed. Sam sighed and darted out into the hall.

Starting down a side hall that lead to a stairwell, and hopefully and exit, Sam was brought short by his brother. He gave Dean a questioning look.

"Car's that way, Sammy."

"You're kidding, right?" Sam demanded, but when his brother just looked at him, his face serious, Sam groaned. "Dean there is no way we are making it out of here with the car. They probably already have agents guarding it. They have to know we've escaped."

"Sam, you said we were getting out of this together or not at all. That includes my car, " Dean replied turning to head back the direction they had come. Knowing arguing was pointless, Sam hurried to follow.

Just as they were nearing a corner footsteps sounded in the next hall causing Sam to duck into a side room pulling Dean in after him. He quickly flicked the lock on the door and moved back into the shadows of the unlit room.

"We are so, so screwed," he mouthed looking about desperately for a place to hide.

Dean gestured to a second door on the opposite side of the room and the brothers silently made their toward it. The footsteps paused in the hall, presumably on the other side of the door they had come through. Not wanting to stick around to see if the searchers had the room key, Dean swung the other door open and they slipped out into another hall.

"Close call," Dean commented as he carefully shut the door behind them. Glancing about he tried to get his bearings in the unfamiliar hall. "This way," he announced taking off down the hall again.

"Dean, wait are you sure?" Sam protested all the while following his brother, "Maybe we should—"

"What? Head back into the hall filled with agents? Or maybe just stop and wait for them to catch up?"

Sam sighed, but conceded that Dean did have a point, even if he didn't think that wandering blindly down the hall was a good option either.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"They're not here," Ziva said, almost triumphantly, as if this proved her point. She, Tony, Fornell and his rookie agent had reached the evidence garage where McGee was waiting for them, but there was no one else in sight.

"Who's not here?" McGee said worriedly, "You expected them to come here?"

"Of course I expect them to come here," Tony snapped, ignoring Ziva's smug look. "They're not going to leave _that_ car behind, at least Dean Winchester definitely won't. And no matter what you think, when it comes down to it his younger brother follows his lead."

Ziva arched an eyebrow, but Fornell spoke first. "I agree, it seems to be the pattern with their cases. Although it's rather extreme to come back for the car now."

"Extremely stupid," Ziva clarified.

"Well, that's to our advantage, isn't it?" Tony told her. "You stay here with Probie and guard the car."

"I'm not guarding this car!" Ziva said indignantly. "There is no need to guard this car! They are not coming back. They must know such an action would result in their capture and they probably don't even know where the car is. We are wasting time here, Tony."

Tony could agree that they were wasting time – wasting time arguing. "Fine, Probie, you stay here and guard the car."

"What, me? By myself?" McGee said in a tiny voice. "I thought you said they took out four agents!"

"They surprised us," Agent Bosley blurted, probably feeling that she had to defend herself and her co-workers. She shrunk away from Fornell's glare.

"They probably won't come here, McGee," Ziva assured him.

"Hopefully we'll catch them before they do," Tony said.

Neither of these statements seemed to put McGee at ease. The other four agents filed out the garage to continue their search.

"We should probably cover this floor first," Tony said decidedly, "If they're looking for their car they'd probably come to this level or the one above us."

"I agree," Fornell replied.

Tony cast him a sidelong glance. "I'm not sure I like you agreeing with me this much. . ."

"Oh, to cry out loudly!" Ziva grumbled, "For the last time, they are not looking for their car."

"It's _for crying out loud_, Zee-vah."

"Um, guys?" Agent Bosley called uneasily, "Some of these doors have been busted open."

Tony and Ziva's bickering ceased momentarily as they searched and cleared the rooms down the hall. They seemed to be one step behind the escapees.

"Abby's lab!" Ziva hissed, gesturing to the next door. It had been broken in also. Tony and Fornell wasted no time in scouting the room.

"It's clear!" shouted Fornell, sounding a little disgusted that they had lost the suspects yet again.

"Well, this sucks," Tony said. "They were definitely here," he noted, "They took some of their weapons back."

Agent Bosley gaped.

"Abby's going to freak when she sees," Tony added, looking over all the machines. It seemed like any button that could be pushed _had_ been pushed. "How old are these guys, three?"

"With men, I find that often they all act as if they are three," Ziva said.

"Um, sir?" Agent Bosley said to Tony. Tony, who was rarely called sir, seemed a bit too pleased about this. "They didn't take any of our weapons."

"None of our weapons are down here," Tony said. Any weapons in Abby's lab had to do with cases. It was actually a good thing that they hadn't touched any weapons other than their own, then NCIS would have had even more problems.

"No," Agent Bosley said, "I mean, when they knocked us out. . ." she glanced uneasily at Fornell, ". . . They, um, left our sidearms. . ."

Tony stared at her incredulously. "They didn't take _any_ of your weapons?"

"Not one," Agent Bosley said.

"That's ridiculous!" cried Ziva, "Why come all the way here just to retrieve their _own_ weapons?"

"You still believe they won't go back for their car?" Tony shot back. He was pulling out his cell phone to call McGee.

"We'd better clear the rest of the floor," Fornell said, motioning with Bosley to come with him.

Tony looked at Ziva anxiously. "McGee's not picking up."

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McGee fidgeted nervously in the garage. He did not like this one bit. There were two homicidal maniacs loose in the building, who had already taken out four agents in their desperate attempt to escape, and he had been left alone to guard a car which one of said homicidal maniacs was _very_, very attached to. This could not end well.

Having worked himself up quite a bit over this, McGee tried to calm himself down by considering everything that had happened from the minute the fire alarm had gone off. He and Abby had evacuated the lab, albeit rather reluctantly on Abby's part. "I can't leave my poor mass spec. all alone! And what about Bertha?" McGee had dragged her out anyway.

Abby was now safely outside with Ducky, and several other agents who he had instructed to cover the perimeter. That assumed of course that outside actually was safe, since the Winchesters may have already been out the building before Tony had called him. . .

"If that was the case," McGee told himself firmly, "There are more than enough NCIS agents out there to deal with them."

No, the person he should most be worried about was himself, seeing as he was alone with the impala. How he hated that impala at the moment. If only Tony had never seen it, they wouldn't be in this mess. The FBI ought to be capable of tracking down their own fugitives. Especially the ultra crazy ones like—

"You don't even know where you're going! Dean, let's just get out of here."

"The car's this way, Sammy. I _know_, okay?"

"You _know_? What, do you have some kind of psychic mind-link to your car now? No, you know what, don't answer that."

McGee froze. It was them. Well, of course it was, they'd just called each other Dean and Sammy, hadn't they? Their voices were coming from far off, still. Maybe down the hall or in the stairwell. They clearly didn't think anyone was around to hear them, or maybe they just didn't care.

Why care when you when you could just kill whoever was listening, anyway? They were mass murderers after all. . . who had already taken out four agents. . . and really, really liked their car. . . McGee tried to stay calm, but failed miserably.

"Hey, I'm not the one who was having freaky psychic visions up until four months ago."

"I don't have them anymore! You know they stopped when the demon died."

They really were completely insane. Unless 'demon' was a code word for something. McGee really did not want to think too much about it. He ducked behind a conveniently placed table just in time to avoid being seen by the Winchesters as they entered the room.

They walked right past him, still arguing.

"Oh god, yes! It's good to see you again, baby. See, Sammy? I told you she was this way."

"Yeah, okay, we found the car. How are we getting it _out_ of here?"

McGee could only see the their backs, but he caught Dean shrugging as he responded. "We'll just drive her out of here. How else?"

"Drive her – drive – Dean, that's insane! There is no way we are just _driving_ out of here in the impala!"

"You got a better idea?"

"Listen," Sam pleaded, "We're going to get caught if we do this. We got the colt – let's just find a way out of here and – and we can get you another car! Okay, we'll – we'll get you a _better_ car."

From the way Sam's voice seemed to falter after this statement, it seemed he knew he'd made a mistake.

"A _better_ car," Dean repeated, his voice dangerously low.

Sam hesitated. "Um, what I meant was. . ."

"No, no I wanna hear this. Exactly what kind of car do you think is _better_ than my car, Sammy?"

"Look, it's not important," Sam protested hurriedly, "Can we please—"

"Freeze!" McGee said, jumping out from behind the table. He had been psyching himself up during their whole argument up until this point, trying to work up the nerve to confront them. "Federal age—AARGH!"

Unfortunately, he had been concentrating so hard on not panicking, that he'd forgotten to take note of the position of his foot in relation to the table, and promptly tripped over it, sprawling face first and hitting his head on the floor with a nasty thud.

Sam and Dean stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Hey, Sam," Dean said after a long moment, "Did you find another rabbit's foot or something?"

~tbc~


	19. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer**: We've really run out of witty disclaimers this time, but that's okay because this is the last chapter. EVER. Dun dun dun.

* * *

"I can't believe they got out," Tony muttered. He was standing with Ziva in the now empty garage. McGee sat on the ground a few feet from them looking rather sheepish. Outside, Fornell was organizing the NCIS agents and the quickly arriving FBI agents into search groups. Apparently the FBI were getting a little tired of losing these guys.

"I cannot believe they came back for their car," Ziva added.

McGee did not get a chance to contribute his own comments as Abby came barreling through the door at that moment. She skidding to a halt at his side. "Oh, poor McGee. Did they hurt you?" She cooed embracing him awkwardly, as he was still seated on the ground. After a moment she pulled back slightly to examine the large lump forming on McGee's temple. "Don't worry McGee, we'll make them pay when Gibbs gets them back," she assured him.

"Can't make them pay for something they didn't do," Gibbs' voice interrupted from the doorway.

Abby looked at Gibbs confused, then turned back to McGee. "McGee?" she asked.

"McClumsy here took himself out, Abbs," Tony informed her, ignoring McGee's unhappy glare.

Abby pulled back and looked down at McGee who was now turning a bright shade of red. "McGee!" she scolded.

"I tripped!" he stammered. "It could happen to anyone."

"I'm gone twenty minutes and you all lose two highly wanted fugitives?" Gibbs asked, already knowing the answer.

"Uh. . ." Tony muttered, looking to Ziva for help. When none seemed forthcoming he continued, "Well, you see, Boss, technically the FBI lost them. They were in FBI custody at the time." It was pathetic and Tony knew it, but at the moment they had little else going for them.

"Fornell is organizing agents, and there is a APB out on their vehicle," Ziva said, bringing their boss up to speed. "Though I still do not understand why they would take it."

"Boss," Tony started hesitantly, casting a worried glance in Abby's direction. "There is something else. They got into the lab and managed to get a hold of a few of their things."

There was silence for a moment as Abby let the information sink in. "They were in my lab?" she asked, her voice quiet.

"I'm sorry, Abbs," Tony said seriously.

Abby swallowed hard and nodded. "I'm okay, it'll be okay," she muttered softly to herself.

"What did they take?" Gibbs asked.

"I'm not positive," Tony replied. "Abby will have to go through the full inventory list, but it looked like some of their guns were gone."

"They didn't take my mass spec., did they?" Abby asked anxiously.

Tony hesitated. "No. . . they didn't _take_ any of your equipment."

"I don't like the way you said that, Tony," Abby said unhappily.

Tony forced a sheepish grin in an attempt to comfort her. Then he turned back to Gibbs. "By the way, Boss. Uh, where did you go off to for twenty minutes?"

"To track down Hamilton's cousin," Gibbs replied after a brief pause.

"The manager's cousin?" Tony repeated, "Did you find him?"

"No," said Gibbs tersely, "Seems he skipped town."

The rest of the team, who had been listening in, all deflated noticeably at this piece of news.

"So we're back to square one," Tony said dejectedly.

Gibbs did not nod or agree, but from the way he strode out of the room they all knew they were in for another long week of late nights and cheap take-outs.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"I can't believe we got out," Sam said shaking his head in amazement.

"Oh come on, Sam, we've been in worse situations before," Dean replied lightly while steering the impala smoothly around a corner and then to a stop next to the gates of a graveyard.

"I don't know, Dean, that was close. Way too close," Sam insisted.

"Whatever. What do you say we salt 'n burn both those bodies and get the hell out of dodge?"

"I'd say that's the first decent idea you've ever had," Sam muttered under his breath.

"I heard that, Sammy," Dean tossed over his shoulder as he climbed out of the car into the rapidly darkening evening.

They both automatically scanned the area for any signs of people. Finding none, Dean grabbed the can of gas they had stopped and picked up, along with a book of matches. Sam grabbed their newly purchased shovels and a small bag of rock salt he had snagged before they had fled NCIS headquarters.

Together they made their way quickly through the graveyard scanning graves as they went until they located the deceased couple's graves. It was a little earlier than they would have liked, but night was falling rapidly and the graveyard was clearly deserted.

Working quickly, they soon had the husband's casket uncovered. Dean pried open the box to reveal the skeletal remains of what had once been a marine. Uncapping the gas can Dean drenched the bones while Sam tossed the salt. A lit match dropped into the grave caused the remains to flare up brightly.

Not stopping to watch the fire, the Winchesters quickly turned their shovels to the next grave. They repeated the process with the wife's bones and without bothering to rebury the ashes they made a beeline for Dean's car.

Sam was half-way into the passenger seat when he noticed Dean was still standing there. "Dean?"

"Now tell me, Sammy, how exactly did you think leaving my car behind would be a good thing? Hmm? We would never have gotten this far without it."

"Oh come on, Dean, seriously? I said I was sorry, man."

Dean gave him an unimpressed look. "And," he continued, "Not only did you suggest _abandoning_ the car. You suggested we _replace_ it. With, I believe your exact words were, 'a better one.'"

Groaning, Sam slid into his seat. "In case you've forgotten, we are a little short on time here."

"I'm just not sure how I can let you sit there in my car, knowing you think of her as some expendable hunk of metal that can be replaced at whim," Dean ranted as he got into the driver's seat not yet starting the engine.

"Dean," Sam said wearily, "I'm sorry I said your car was replaceable. Really. I am. Now can we just go?"

"I don't think you mean that, Sammy. And she knows you don't mean it," Dean replied gesturing to the dash as he spoke.

"Dean!"

"All right, all right," Dean gave in starting the car. "Still it worries me, Sammy. How am I supposed to trust you with her now that I have seen your true feelings?"

Sam groaned again and banged his head lightly on the side widow. "How are we even related?" he asked no one in particular as they headed for the highway and somewhere hopefully far, far from DC.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"I do not understand these men!" Ziva complained frustrated.

"Are you still on that? I thought we agreed to let the FBI have them," Tony replied looking across to where Ziva sat at her desk with Abby's inventory lists from the Winchester's impala spread across her desk.

"Not only did they flee with their car, but they also took several items from Abby's lab," Ziva began, despite Tony statement that the case belonged back in the hands of the bureau agents.

"Yes, Ziva. I did catch that part," Tony commented.

"Yes, but it is what they took that I do not understand," she explained holding up the list. "They took two sawed off shotguns, and an extremely old revolver!"

"A gun is a gun," Tony said with a half shrug.

"If they had only wanted weapons why not disarm the unconscious agents? Or why not take the new handgun that was also on the table?"

"They're insane, Zee-vah. They don't have to make sense!" It was clear Tony was getting tired of this entirely pointless conversation.

"And then they go and grab a bag of salt? It does not make sense."

"Like I said. They. Are. Insane. Come on, Probie, back me up on this one."

From his own desk McGee muttered something unintelligible, muffled by the fact that he had his face buried in his arms on his desk.

"Sorry what was that, Probie?" Tony asked.

"I said," McGee replied lifting his head slightly, "Gibbs is going to ship me to Alaska isn't he?"

Tony grinned, "Of course not, Probie." McGee looked slightly relieved until Tony added, "It's so much easier for him to make your life hell when you're close by."

McGee groaned and dropped his head back into his arms with something that sounded distinctly like, "Alaska can't be so bad."

Still grinning, Tony turned to Ziva. "Where has Gibbs gone off to anyway?"

"He is down in Abby's lab, attempting to calm her. Something about her babies being violated or something," Ziva replied, clearly confused by what she had heard.

Downstairs in NCIS's forensics lab, Abby paced around the room like a caged animal. "They touched them Gibbs," she said. "All of them. They . . . they touched them!"

Gibbs just stood by silently watching the distraught gothic tech as she made a circuit around the small room.

"It's just so. . . so—" Abby trailed off unable to find suitable words to express herself.

"Was anything broken?" Gibbs finally asked.

"God no," Abby replied, clearly horrified at the very thought. "I had to perform a few recalibrations but—"

"And that took how long?"

"A few minutes. . . But Gibbs, that's not the point!" she exclaimed.

Gibbs just looked at her blankly.

"Gibbs he touched my babies!" she repeated, as though he should understand.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"Dean . . . What are you doing?" Sam asked. He was sitting on his bed in the motel they had finally stopped at, after driving all night and all the next day and was a little concerned by the three firearms lying on the the bed next to his brother.

"What does it look like, Sammy?" Dean replied picking up a piece of his dismantled shot gun.

"Uh, okay. You're cleaning your guns. But _why_ are you cleaning your guns?" Sam ventured tentatively.

"They're my guns." Dean said as though that explained all. "They're what keep us alive, Sam. And who knows what those weirdo forensic techs did to them!"

"Ri-ight," Sam said with a raised eyebrow before turning his attention back to the new laptop he had just bought, using Dean's newest fake credit card.

Dean continued as though Sam was still paying attention. "They probably took them all apart. Got their grubby little swabby things in all the mechanisms. I mean they. . . they touched them, Sam!"

"Mh-hum." Sam replied absently, as he had stopped listening.

"Sam are you even listening?" Dean asked, but he got not response. Sighing heavily he went back to cleaning his gun. "Can't believe they touched my car _and_ my guns."

**The End**

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**A/N**: Thanks for reading and all the reviews! :)


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